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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23909053">they were zoommates</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanev91/pseuds/elanev91'>elanev91</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, COVID-19, Co-workers, Coronavirus, F/M, I'm not sorry, Quarantine, a good bit, a thing???, also they talk a lot about tiger king, but like, graphic designer!lily, just like heads up they're in quarantine because of ms rona in this fic, not a lot, social media manager!james, yes - Freeform, zoom au</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:07:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,913</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23909053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanev91/pseuds/elanev91</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily's on lockdown and, because she can't help herself, signs herself up for a whole bunch of extra (and free) work with her ad agency. Minerva, her boss, assigns a cheeky social media manager to her team to help her. Also, Marlene discovers TikTok (this is nowhere near as important to the narrative as its inclusion here suggests).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James Potter/Lily Evans Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>293</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>they were zoommates</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So @es-bee reblogged <a href="https://elanev91.tumblr.com/post/613773632366379008/high-key-i-love-this">this</a> onto my tumblr feed and then @gryffindor-mischief basically told me to write it and I mean. </p><p>We’re quarantined, what was I supposed to do? Not write this???? I don’t think so. Though, lord, this was harder to write than I realised it would be. Also, this title is from the tags on the tumblr post because that person is a genius (I kept singing Supernova Girl in my head while I was writing this and I almost named it some of the chorus lyrics from that gem of a song, but I didn't.... obviously)</p><p>I hope you’re all doing well. I tried to keep this story light and happy, so I hope it brings a smile to your face. Sending you my love x</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>'Oh, for <em>fuck's </em>sake.'</p><p>Lily clicked a little bit harder than was probably strictly necessary on her trackpad and the poor thing gave a deep, sad little groan. 'Sorry,' she said, absently running her fingertips over the trackpad as she scanned her computer screen, trying, desperately, to increase the download speed of this <em>fucking driver </em>with her eyes.</p><p>'You should have downloaded it before your meeting.'</p><p>Marlene, Lily's incredibly unhelpful roommate and even worse best friend, was sitting on the sofa, smirking at her like the fucking Cheshire Cat.</p><p>'I thought I'd downloaded it already,' Lily said. It was a blatant lie and Marlene knew it. She damn near laughed in Lily's face.</p><p>'Well, okay,' Lily pushed up from her computer and walked into the kitchen, snatching the kettle off the base and all but chucking it into the sink so she could start to fill it. 'I thought that it would download quicker than this.'</p><p>'You know that everyone's home now using the wifi. Our bandwidth is going to be <em>fucked.</em>'</p><p>'Because that's what we're all supposed to be concerned about right now while we're literally on lock down because of a pandemic.'</p><p>Marlene just held her fingers up at Lily over her shoulder.</p><p>'You could have quarantined with Dorcas, you know,' Lily said. She switched off the tap and set the kettle back onto the base.</p><p>Marlene turned around on the sofa and smiled at her, all sugary sweet. 'But then who would be here with you, my love?'</p><p>Lily rolled her eyes. 'Do you want tea?'</p><p>'Yeah, go on.'</p><p>By the time Lily finished preparing their tea, her Zoom client had downloaded and had been sitting there waiting for her to start up for who the fuck knew how long. She swore loudly, practically threw her mug onto the table as she sat down, and set Marlene's mug down, as far as she could reach, on the other end of the kitchen table.</p><p>'Tea's here. Gotta login to my meeting.'</p><p>Marlene grumbled theatrically as she pushed herself to her feet, but Lily ignored her. She clicked into Slack, scrolled back up to find the initial Zoom request, and clicked "Join". She took a swift sip of her tea — it was literally like sucking molten lava through a bloody straw — and was still making a sort of gagging face when her image preview popped up onto her screen to ask her to approve her audio and video access.</p><p>'What service,' Marlene whispered.</p><p>Lily held her fingers up at Marlene from behind her computer screen. Marlene just winked at her before she turned and padded off to her bedroom.</p><p>Everyone was already logged into the meeting when Lily's screen loaded, and she took as quiet a breath as she could muster as she adjusted her posture in her chair. No one seemed to have noticed that she'd arrived and she was keen to take a second to get herself settled because christ almighty, what was it about these video conferences that always made you look —</p><p>'Hey, Lily!'</p><p>James Potter's picture jumped to prominence on her screen as he spoke, and Lily physically started, one, because she hadn't expected <em>James Potter </em>to suddenly pop up on her screen like that, and, two, because now her boss was going to <em>fucking know she was late, James</em>.</p><p>As if on cue, Minerva cleared her throat and she popped up onto Lily's screen. This "focus on whoever is talking" thing was going to give Lily a bloody headache, but she also knew that her entire side of the company was on this Zoom chat right now and she wouldn't be able to see anyone if she made every one's picture the same size.</p><p>'Yes, welcome, Lily. Let's get started everyone.'</p><p>Lily had half a mind to apologise — to explain that she'd been downloading the driver or offer up some other excuse — but she knew that that would only delay the meeting still further and, really, Minvera didn't care for excuses.</p><p>'I anticipate that we're going to be running these meetings for a fair few weeks into the future, so it's best if we work out a system now,' Minerva said. 'If everyone could mute their microphones, please, and, if you have questions for someone speaking, instead of jumping in, just type your questions in the chat. Alright?'</p><p>Minerva paused for a moment, her eyes scanning over her computer screen, and she must have seen people nodding — Lily was nodding, so she just assumed — because she cleared her throat and flipped open a notebook on her desk, the crack of the metal rings on the wood sounding loudly over the audio.</p><p>'So, these are obviously new times we've found ourselves in,' Minerva said, and Lily hastily tapped the mute button on her microphone so that she could pull up a fresh document and start taking notes, 'and I want to thank you all, first, for your flexibility. We're going to be looking at some adjustment for quite a fair bit of time, so I don't want you to think that this means "business as usual" is back on right away.</p><p>'That said, I do expect our work to continue. Print and Outdoor will have to shift focus,' Lily thought she saw Jade shaking her head from her little window along the bottom row of Lily's chat screen, 'but TV/Radio and Digital shouldn't see too many changes, though we're likely to see an increase in volume.'</p><p>'Great,' Lily muttered under her breath as she typed out <em>increase in volume </em>in enormous bold letters. She'd been hoping — foolishly, because, really, she was already busy at work and she should have known — that things would slow down a little bit now that she was going to be working from home.</p><p>Not that she necessarily expected to be able to start baking bread in the middle of the day — not that she was capable of such things — but she hoped that she'd have time to like….</p><p>You know, think about the fact that they were in a pandemic. Try to figure out how to do something useful.</p><p>Not that she had any skills beyond drawing little pictures on her tablet.</p><p>'We'll go team by team in a minute and then there will be time for questions at the end,' Minerva said, 'but I want to let you all know that Management has been steadily reaching out to all our clients over the last few days. The communication we sent is in the COVID-19 Slack channel and, while we'll continue sending company wide emails for necessary updates, most of your day to day information and more minor updates will be found there, so make sure you pay close attention to the updates there.'</p><p>Minerva paused for a moment, folding her hands neatly in front of her as she stared directly down the camera. 'As I said earlier, these are unprecedented times. We're going to do what we can, but it's going to be hard — the economy is going to do what it's going to do, after all.' Minerva's mouth curved, ever so slightly, into a sardonic smile.</p><p>'Best we can do is carry on, and, with <em>that</em>,' Minerva sat up a bit straight in her chair and turned slightly, almost like they were sitting at an actual conference table and she was moving to look at whoever she was talking to, 'Jade, has Print had a chance to meet? Talk about how you all might adjust?'</p><p>'Not really, Minerva,' Jade's picture popped up larger on Lily's screen and, though Lily continued to take notes, she was, at this point, mostly half listening.</p><p>So it went for the next three quarters of an hour. They went team by team and, though Lily mildly paid attention when they were talking to Emma, the Art Director, in case she got called on to talk about something, she mostly had one ear on her meeting while her fingers absently typed notes and her eyes roamed aimlessly around the flat.</p><p>She could have just gotten on Twitter like a normal person, but then she'd hunch over her phone like a fucking gargoyle and start drooling and <em>definitely </em>not typing notes and then it wouldn't take more than a glance to find out that she wasn't paying even the slightest bit attention to what they were talking about.</p><p>It was a skill she'd learnt in university — how to take genuinely decent notes while letting her brain drift off to bloody outer space.</p><p>'Okay, thanks, Trevor, now. Does anyone have questions? Comments? Things they're thinking about?'</p><p>Lily gradually fell back into her awareness as Minerva started speaking again and, after a quick glance at her notes document to confirm that she had, indeed, been taking notes, she sat up a little straighter and navigated into the chat.</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I've got something I'd like to propose</em>
</p><p>Minerva was quiet for a second before she said, 'Ah,' and turned to look at the camera again. 'Lily, great, let's hear it.'</p><p>Lily took a deep breath and, after sitting up just a touch taller, she unmuted her microphone.</p><p>'So, I know that digital is about to get flooded, and that the Art Department is about to be absolutely inundated,' she smiled down at the tiny viewing window at the bottom of her screen that was Emma, 'but I've been thinking about something over the weekend that I wanted to bring here.'</p><p>She paused like she would in a meeting, half expecting someone to give her the go ahead, for someone to nod or Minerva to mutter, 'Go on,' but everyone was absolutely silent. She drew in another breath, this one softer so that the camera didn't pick up her huffing air like a lunatic.</p><p>'I want to reach out to run free fundraising campaigns for the NHS. And for other non-profits, like food banks and homeless charities, groups who are at the front lines of this.' She sounded far firmer than she ever would have expected of herself and she was halfway to genuinely giving herself a high five on camera.</p><p>'I know it'll be a lot of planning and we can't do anything until we reach out to them in the first place to confirm that they'd be interested, but I think that they're going to be too overwhelmed to market themselves and I've been thinking, anyway, about what we,' she meant <em>I</em>, but she knew it was better, more convincing, to say <em>we</em>, 'can do, and this is an area where we all have immense skill.</p><p>'Essentially, my vision is that we'd put together mini campaigns to drive donations to NHS charities, food banks and other charities, and that we'd also be able to design campaigns for public efforts, like funding drives to raise money for PPE or community groups looking for more people to help them make homemade masks, that sort of thing.</p><p>'But I also don't want to infringe on the work that we all have to do, I don't want to ask everyone to have to navigate this, and, honestly, for this type of work, I think it's best if we have a small central core of people doing the work. I'd recommend — or, uh —' She swallowed. 'Beyond myself, one or two other people should be enough to cover the bulk of the work. And if we needed a bit of expertise from someone, I'd hope we could email or call them. But otherwise, uh — I really think we could manage it.'</p><p>She fell quiet for a second and looked into Minerva's face, still large on her screen because she'd been the last one talking. It was hard to get a read on her over the computer — hell, it was bloody hard to get a read on her in person — but there was a different sort of intensity to her face now. Less a severity and more a….</p><p>Well, Lily didn't know what.</p><p>Lily watched as Minerva did that thing she always did in meetings, where she sucked in a breath while simultaneously sitting up straighter in her chair and staring at the person she was focused on like she thought doing anything other than pinning them with her eyes would allow them to escape.</p><p>It was a little less powerful over Zoom but, to Lily's embarrassment — or, perhaps, to Zoom's credit, or, more accurately, Minerva's — the effect was still the same.</p><p>Lily didn't fucking move.</p><p>'I think that's a brilliant idea, Lily.' Minerva said it so swiftly Lily almost didn't hear what she'd said. She just stared at her screen like a deer in headlights for a beat and then, by the time it clicked in her skull what Minerva had said and she was halfway to opening her mouth to exclaim her gratitude, Minvera carried on.</p><p>Which was for the best, honestly, because Lily didn't need to start shouting her gratitude at her boss for letting her do something good in the world. Or, you know, <em>hopefully </em>do some good in the world.</p><p>'James,' Minerva said, and, immediately, Lily felt something in her still. 'This seems like something up your street. And certainly in your wheelhouse. What do you think?'</p><p>'Yeah,' James Potter's face appeared, large and smiling, in the centre of Lily's screen again. 'I'd love to work on this if that's alright with Lily. I've actually already started sketching out some thoughts.' He laughed and held a writing pad up to the camera. It was covered in his untidy scrawl, but Lily could pick out a few words like <em>Twitter </em>and <em>Instagram </em>and <em>NEED HASHTAG.</em></p><p>'Yeah,' Lily started saying, but Minerva said, 'Great,' at the same time, and then they both fell silent for a beat while they waited for the other one to talk again. Finally, Minerva cleared her throat.</p><p>'Great,' she said again, 'Lily, James, have at it. Everyone else, please do assist them if they come calling. Within reason,' her voice was slightly sterner, and Lily felt sure that Minerva would have been looking her right in the eyes if they were in the same room.</p><p>Lily nodded vigorously, overdoing the gesture slightly as though compensating for the webcam connecting them.</p><p>'Of course, Minerva. Thank you. And,' she took a breath, and smiled a little at the small picture of James along the bottom edge of her screen, 'thank you, James, for joining me.'</p><p>James nodded and shrugged one shoulder, all casual, and Minerva cleared her throat. 'Excellent. Anything else from anyone?'</p><p>She paused for a beat but, as no one else stepped up to volunteer themselves for an immense amount of extra (and, in the grand scheme of the company, unnecessary) work, Minerva shut her notebook with a snap.</p><p>'Great call everyone. Let's try and get these all teams on the calendar for our usual slot moving forward, eh?'</p><p>Lily was sure that Polly, Minerva's assistant, was now aggressively scribbling a note to herself.</p><p>'I'll see you all then unless I'm scheduled to see you before. Good work, everyone, and stay safe.'</p><p>The call was a flurry of goodbyes for a minute — all 'Goodbye's and 'Be well's — before Lily waved one last time at the camera and jabbed her finger into the exit meeting button.</p><p>'Jesus christ.' Lily leant down and dropped her head forward, her forehead resting half on the bottom bit of her laptop, half hovering over the tabletop.</p><p>There was something uniquely draining about being on webcam like that.</p><p>She could barely wait for the avalanche of think pieces she was sure to see about it over the next month.</p><p>She'd just picked up her head and grabbed her tea — it was a bit cold now — to take a bracing sip when her computer dinged with an email notification.</p><p>From… Slack… according to the notification.</p><p>Christ, these people were busy.</p><p>
  <em>From: Slack</em>
</p><p>
  <em>To: Lily Evans ( .uk)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hi Lily,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You've been added to a new private channel on Slack, "Doing Good while Looking Good".</em>
</p><p>She immediately rolled her eyes.</p><p>And then she clicked on the link.</p>
<hr/><p>It wasn't that Lily didn't <em>like </em>James Potter. She liked him well enough, as well as you like the less annoying people that you spend a majority of your conscious hours with.</p><p>And he really was on the less annoying side of her work spectrum, all cheeky Slack channels aside. Every time she'd had to work with him had been an absolute breeze and he was always bloody laughing about something, which was sometimes annoying but, mostly, it didn't bother her. She felt like she didn't even hear it most of the time anyway because she was usually in the zone.</p><p>She just felt like the outlier compared to everyone else they worked with where James Potter was concerned. Because everyone, <em>everyone</em>, loved that fucking man.</p><p>James was — and she wasn't even remotely exaggerating — the life of their goddamn office. He was always floating around from table to table (because of course they had one of those "creative" and "collaborative" open floor plans) in the mornings saying hello, was always flashing grins left, right, and bloody centre, and he was good at his job, but he was also funny and the first one to offer to run back to the tea point and he either knew a little bit about everything or he was an incredibly good bullshitter because he managed to talk to everyone in that office about whatever incredibly niche thing they were interested in.</p><p>Like how did he know enough about prehistoric seashell fossils found in Norfolk to talk to fucking Eamonn about it whenever they ran into each other? <em>How?</em></p><p>Lily had confronted — or, maybe not <em>confronted, </em>because confronted was a strong word, maybe <em>asked </em>— him about that one of the last times they'd worked together, a few months back when they were working with a few companies on their holiday campaigns (one of which, Gregg's, had sent over a load of sausage rolls to keep them happy, which was literally the best part of her job). It had been a joke — 'How in the hell do you remember what everyone is interested in and know enough to talk about it? I'd think you were walking Wikipedia or something.' — but James' response had been incredibly earnest.</p><p>'I just remember little details, that's all. And,' he'd smiled at her then, all bright and sunshiney and the slightest bit sneaky, 'I'm definitely not a walking Wikipedia.'</p><p>Like, fucking hell, he was so <em>nice</em>.</p><p>The office golden boy.</p><p>And then there Lily was with her occasionally amused but definitely still not trying to be alone with him if she could avoid it attitude.</p><p>She hadn't thought that she was being obvious about it, this vague sort of avoidance, but Holly, the office gossip, had asked Lily about it once while she was putting the kettle on, like <em>fully in earshot of everyone at the table behind them </em>asked her about it. All, 'So, why don't you like James Potter?'</p><p>Lily'd spluttered something, she didn't really remember now, but really, it was just the injustice of the whole thing, because it wasn't, for the millionth time, that she didn't <em>like </em>James Potter.</p><p>It….</p><p>There was just something about him that made her feel a little unsettled. Not like he was secretly a murderer and they were all going to see him on Channel 4 news one night and then end up having to give interviews for weeks like, 'He was always so funny, and always grabbing tea for everyone, I just can't bloody believe it!', but like….</p><p>Like she couldn't find her footing when he was around. Like she was incredibly aware of him, in every sense of the word, and it just…. It made her nervous.</p><p>Nervous, maybe, wasn't the right word, but it was the best one she had.</p><p>Rather than jumping right into the deep end, Lily and James set their first meeting for Wednesday afternoon and spent the first day and a half after the Zoom meeting talking back and forth on their Slack channel and sharing ideas about what they thought this project of theirs could look like.</p><p>There was something to be said for an initial planning meeting or a brainstorming meeting, but Lily was never a fan of showing up at these things completely empty-handed. She felt like it was, in a lot of ways, a wasted opportunity.</p><p>Especially when you could do some fairly decent brainstorming over the good ol' Slack DM (see: Lily and James, Monday-Tuesday).</p><p>They put together a reasonable list by the time they approached their Wednesday meeting — they had a fair mix of established charities and crowdfunded campaigns to contact and offer to support, and James had put together a list of contacts he had at various newspapers and a collection of UK-based influencers, people that he could reach out to over Twitter and get them to share what they were doing or even, if they were lucky, participate in the campaigns themselves.</p><p><em>Whichever gets us the most traction, </em>James had said in his Slack post, and Lily couldn't help but agree.</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: absolutely</em>
</p><p>Wednesday morning dawned bright and a bit cold, though it was the warmest morning — a whole 7° — that week. Lily was, for now, trying to wake up somewhere near her usual time, so the flat was still completely silent and more than a little dark when she shuffled out of her bedroom to the kitchen.</p><p>She moved about her morning routine in silence, only the sounds of her shifting things around breaking the quiet — the kettle dropping onto the base, her bowl on the counter, the clink of one mug against another as she grabbed one out of the cupboard, the soft <em>swish </em>of her dropping a tea bag into her mug. It was this, this quiet, calm, unhurried morning, that she hoped to preserve whenever they were all allowed out of their houses again.</p><p>Assuming, of course, that they were ever allowed out of their houses again.</p><p>Her mornings were normally rushed — even when she woke up with enough time to get herself ready and out the door, she felt like she was running from task to task to task in her mind for the first hour that she was awake every single morning. And it was nice, having this opportunity to slow down, to think about something else other than what she had to do next, to be able to stop obsessing over what time it was.</p><p>This morning, as she had for the last two mornings, she took her tea and bowl of muesli (because she was, apparently, a solid forty-five now) into the living room, and sat on the sofa for the better part of an hour, eating her breakfast and scrolling through Instagram. She knew that it was sort of silly (i.e.; completely stupid), but her Instagram was something that she was weirdly sort of proud of. And not even because she felt like she had the most perfect grid in existence — she definitely didn't — but because she'd managed to make that one app something that she genuinely enjoyed using. Something that didn't fill her brain with anxiety or bullshit (like Twitter usually did). It had taken a long time to perfect her list of Instagram followers, for her to get the right mix of posts from her friends, posts from professional contacts, and posts from other artists and designers who made work she enjoyed. The Instagram piece wasn't an entirely new part of her morning — she was always scrolling through IG, partially for something to do and partially because she (most of the time) found it genuinely inspiring to look at the art other people were creating — but the pace of this activity was new for her.</p><p>She studied some of the posts that caught her eye now, tried to work out their construction, rather than just rapid fire saving them to one of her many collections with the rarely-realised intention of looking at them later as she slid haphazardly through the crowds outside Monument Station.</p><p>Though, honestly, she sort of missed the crowds outside Monument Station.</p><p>Just a little bit.</p><p>By the time she finally dragged herself back up off the sofa and into her bedroom to start getting dressed, it was nearly quarter to nine. She switched on her Spotify-generated commute playlist — she liked, you know, to keep some things as normal as possible — and turned the volume down so that she didn't wake Marlene on the other side of the wall. She dropped her phone down onto the duvet as that new song from The Weeknd started playing, and began bobbing her head a little in time as she walked across the threadbare carpet to her wardrobe.</p><p>It wasn't going to get that warm today, twelve, she thought, if she was remembering her weather app correctly, so she selected a pair of light wash jeans (Lily of two years ago would never, but she was feeling light wash these days) and one of her favourite jumpers — a sleek colour-blocked jumper that was black except for the white diagonal stripe across her chest that gave way to a light beige that filled the whole of her left shoulder.</p><p>She didn't need to get dressed — or at least, she didn't need to get dressed below the waist —but it was impossible for her to focus if she was palling around the house in joggers all day.</p><p>Lily was useless unless she conned herself into feeling like she was actually at work.</p><p>It was a few minutes after nine when Lily scooped her laptop off the desk in her bedroom and walked back into the kitchen, opting to spend the morning there before she sequestered herself in her bedroom for her meeting that afternoon. She flipped her laptop open as she walked, punching in her password as swiftly as she could with one hand before refreshing her work email client and, in the tab to the right, Slack. Slack was, of course, a mess — she had a few notifications from her channel with James she needed to look at before their meeting, and it looked like the COVID channel had been updated and, <em>shit, </em>so had the Art Department's channel — but she opted, instead, to start looking over the emails in the top of her inbox as she set the kettle on to boil again.</p><p>She knew that all those <em>productive work gurus </em>advised against doing that exact thing, checking your email first, but she liked getting a lay of the land in the morning.</p><p>Lily worked in relative silence through the morning with nothing more than the soft sounds of her music playing over her computer speakers. She had a good bit of work to do — Minerva hadn't been lying when she said that things were really going to be stepping up for digital for the foreseeable — but she managed, between cups of tea (or, perhaps, because of those cups of tea) to get a little bit of final organising done in preparation for her meeting with James that afternoon.</p><p>Her meeting with James was on the calendar for one, so Lily wolfed down her lunch — Marlene, who had joined Lily at the table at the crack of noon, had taken a picture of her eating, jaw completely unhinged because she always put too many fucking chips on her chip butty, and texted it to their WhatsApp group like</p><p>
  <em>Get you a girl with an appetite like this </em>
</p><p>Arsehole.</p><p>But Lily, no less deterred, inhaled her lunch so that she could use that last hour before her meeting to pull the last few bits of her sanity together. She had notes everywhere — because she'd just been scribbling them down wherever she'd been working when she thought of them that morning instead of adding them to the brain dump space — and it took her a little bit to find them all and get them into some kind of order.</p><p>She felt, more or less, like she was supposed to be running this meeting at one, and she felt herself start getting nervous at the prospect of having to have, like, <em>talking points</em> and an <em>agenda</em> and <em>things they wanted to achieve</em>.</p><p>She'd led a few meetings in her time now, but she still got a little nervous before each one.</p><p>She was only more nervous now because she'd never lead a meeting on Zoom before. Which was a decidedly different dynamic.</p><p>She made herself another cuppa and retreated into her bedroom a few minutes before one, determined to give Marlene the living space this time because she'd gotten the run of the whole flat on Monday for her all team meeting. She set up in her usual space on her desk but, when she started the camera preview, she realised that you could see her bed in the background of the frame.</p><p>She didn't want to be able to see her bed in the back of the frame.</p><p>It seemed weird, having it there.</p><p>Like… it was a <em>bed. </em></p><p>She shifted around a little bit, but the trouble with her room was that there wasn't really anywhere else to go, not unless you were sitting on the bed itself and that just felt even weirder. Lily managed to angle her computer and then herself just so so that you could see the end of the bed just to the lower right, but the pillow was, at least, hidden from view, and she contented herself with that because now, <em>shit</em>, it was bang on one o'clock.</p><p>James was already in the meeting when she clicked through the preview into the main chat space.</p><p>'Hey.' Lily raised her hand at the screen and was waving before she caught herself and managed to stop.</p><p>She looked like a fucking idiot.</p><p>James flashed her a bright grin.</p><p>'Hey. How're you this fine, fine Wednesday afternoon?'</p><p>'Oh, you know.' Lily smiled in spite of herself and raised her mug from the table towards the camera. 'Just caffeinating until I feel something.'</p><p>James snorted. 'I hear that, Evans.'</p><p>Lily laughed a little before she drew in a breath and clicked, softly, on the chat window to move it to the side of her screen. She wanted to try and get a side by side going on, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to manage it and still end up with everything looking readable.</p><p>'Okay so, it seems like we have a lot of good ideas on the channel.' Lily scrolled through their brainstorming page — which, thankfully, she'd managed to dump her ideas onto before they'd gotten onto this call. They hadn't organised anything yet, so things were a little all over the place — like she definitely saw <em>NHS? </em>and its many variants on there, like, 400 times at least — but she thought that it was more than enough to get them going.</p><p>'Of course we have good ideas,' James said. When Lily's gaze flicked over to him again, he was smiling that smile at her.</p><p>That one that was like, vaguely cocky but also somehow endearing.</p><p>That James Potter smile, as she called it in her head.</p><p>'But, okay,' James' smile softened a little and his expression became just a touch more serious. 'Tell me more about your vision for this because I feel like I know based on what you shared at the meeting and what you've been adding to the Slack, but I want to hear how you'd summarise it, not my interpretation of your summary.'</p><p>Lily hummed thoughtfully and nodded slowly, her gaze wandering over James' face on the left half of her screen before it flicked up over top the back of her laptop screen to skim over the pin board she had overhead, the post it notes from Marlene, the concert tickets from previous nights out, the stickers she'd bought from the world's most talented people off Redbubble.</p><p>It wasn't that she didn't know what she was thinking about with this project of hers, but she did always struggle, a little bit, with how she wanted to put things into words. It was why drawing was something that she leant on so heavily, why it was something that she'd gravitated towards as a child — where finding the words to describe how she was feeling felt impossible, there was always the possibility of drawing it. Of telling the truth about something — something that was usually, in some twisted way, herself — when she let herself draw it out.</p><p>Words….</p><p>Well, words she had a much harder time with.</p><p>She blamed her repressed English upbringing.</p><p>'Basically,' Lily said, her gaze drifting back down to the webcam and, honestly, mostly settling on James' face, 'I've been thinking about how a lot of these places are going to need supplies over the next few weeks. Whether it's money or face masks or healthcare supplies or whatever, like —' She reached up and brushed a hand through her hair. 'I don't own a car factory I can teach to make ventilators,' she laughed a little, 'but I'm good at drawing little pictures and my little pictures are apparently good at telling people about things and getting them to throw their money at stuff. And I want them to throw their money at this. The people that can afford it.'</p><p>She paused for a moment, and she thought that James was going to say something, anything, but he was just sat there nodding and smiling and, after a beat of silence, Lily couldn't fight the urge to carry on talking.</p><p>She was too busy fighting the urge to ask James if he'd been bodysnatched because who the hell was this quiet man who was just sitting there nodding at her, like? And so, you know, her energy was occupied at the moment.</p><p>'I don't know how much of an effect we can have in the way of getting the NHS more ventilators or proper PPE or anything like that, but I think that we can use this to help drive donations to NHS charities so they can buy more equipment, especially because companies are <em>awful</em>,' her tone was equal parts disgusted and horrified, but in no way surprised, 'and raising prices, and we can help spread the word about those homemade mask campaigns so carers at least have <em>something</em>, and we can advertise for the Trussell Trust, if they'll have us, and get people to donate money to food banks, and I don't know how much good it'll do, honestly, but I think that, you know….' She shook her head a little and sighed.</p><p>'I think it'll do a whole lot of good,' James said. He was looking right at her — not even at the screen, but dead down the webcam — and he looked completely serious. 'You're brilliant, Lily.'</p><p>She laughed immediately and shook her head again. 'Well, let's not waste our time talking about things we already know.'</p><p>James laughed then, that bright, loud laugh Lily was so used to hearing echoing off the walls at work, and she couldn't help but smile a little at him.</p><p>'Yes, ma'am,' James was still grinning, that James Potter smile in full force. 'Let's get to work, then.'</p><p>They were only scheduled to be on the call for an hour, but, when they looked up from organising their Slack channel, they'd already gone over by half an hour. Lily had immediately apologised and damn near rang off, but James had insisted — three times — that it was fine.</p><p>'It's not like I've got anywhere else to be,' he said, smirking at her. 'I'm yours, Evans. Relax.'</p><p>That, something about that, had made Lily draw in a little breath.</p><p>'Okay.' She took a deep breath. 'We don't have that much we can do now, though….'</p><p>She started scanning over their new document, a neater version of their brainstorming document that they'd saved for posterity — or, more accurately, they'd saved because, being creative people, they were weird little idea hoarders. They'd played with the structure for a while — did they want to organise by activity (driving financial donations; driving volunteers; driving other donations), organise by destination (NHS, Trussell/Food banks, etc) — before they finally hammered out something that seemed like it was going to work for them (a two-tiered organisation by destination then activity that James was, as he should be, stupidly proud of). She knew that the list in front of them was only just the beginning, especially because you always seemed to find more things to do the minute that you really dug your feet into something, but she thought that they'd made an incredibly decent start.</p><p>'I suppose we could start working out work flows,' she said, her gaze focusing on James again. 'Get a sense of the first steps for all these things so we can at least get some irons in the fire? Assign at the end and then hop to it?'</p><p>James nodded and Lily thought she heard him hum a little softly, too, but she couldn't be sure. 'Perfect.' He wasn't smiling, not really, but there was a lightness in his eyes that she couldn't look away from. 'Brilliant.'</p><p>Lily chuckled. 'You'll need to stop complimenting me so much,' she flashed him a grin as her fingers started adding bullet points underneath each project in their document. 'My ego'll inflate.'</p><p>James laughed and she thought, this time, that she could hear it echoing off the walls of the room he was sitting in. 'That's normally my line.'</p><p>Lily snorted. 'Why am I not even remotely surprised?'</p><p>James quirked an eyebrow at her. 'Because I'm fabulous?'</p><p>Lily just snorted in response.</p><p>It took them, on the whole, another half an hour to get through the initial work flows for all the projects they'd created for themselves. While Lily was tempted to more thoroughly lay out the process on paper, she knew that the process looked entirely different depending on what the client said to them, whether they wanted an exclusively social media campaign, whether they wanted drawing at all, all of it changed depending on what they were looking for.</p><p>And, of course, whether they were going to let Lily and James help at all.</p><p>'Okay, so I'll email these people,' Lily highlighted the top half of the list with her cursor, 'and you email those?' She nodded her head down towards the unhighlighted listings down at the bottom and, though she knew that James probably didn't have the slightest idea she'd even nodded her head, she was confident that he understood her meaning.</p><p>'Perfect,' James said. He was smiling again, a smaller thing this time, but a smile all the same. 'Do we want to set deadlines or?'</p><p>Lily hummed softly and thought for a moment. 'Emails by the end of the day today, request to hear from them by the end of the week next week?'</p><p>James nodded, his smile flashing just a touch wider. 'Brilliant.'</p><p>'Okay, uh — I'll let you have your afternoon back.'</p><p>James breathed a little laugh. His eyes crinkled a little at the corners when he did that.</p><p>'Okay.'</p><p>He was far less chatty than usual, wasn't he, and he was really putting the conversational burden on her.</p><p>'Okay, so.' She swallowed. 'I'll talk to you… when's a good time to check in, actually? Next week, same time?'</p><p>'Sure.' James nodded. 'If we're asking folks to get back to us by next Friday, that's a good mid-point.'</p><p>'Right.' Lily nodded slowly. 'And we can always have more meetings if we need to, once we actually get people to agree that they want to work with us on this.'</p><p>'Exactly.'</p><p>Lily looked at him for a second, just looked at him looking at her, before finally she took another deep breath, one that drew her up in her seat, and tried to adopt her most authority-ish tone.</p><p>'Right. Well, we'll chat next week, then. And we can keep in touch over Slack if anything changes.'</p><p>James nodded once at her. 'Right.'</p><p>'Okay, great.' She paused for a moment, the words caught in her throat, and James seemed to know that something was up because he was just sat there smiling at her, something like amusement shining in his eyes.</p><p>She drew in a swift breath. 'Bye, James.'</p><p>James' smile widened. 'Bye, Lily.'</p><p>And, before she could start rambling on about anything else, Lily ended the meeting.</p>
<hr/><p>Lily was surprised at the success they had almost right away.</p><p>She'd barely sent the emails out to the contacts she could find at the NHS charities before she was getting amazed, enthusiastic emails back, and, judging by how swiftly she was getting Slack notifications from James over the next two days, she was guessing that they were on a similar page where this success was concerned.</p><p>They met Friday midday that week, instead of waiting until their previously scheduled Wednesday meeting, to chat through the requests and suggestions they'd gotten from their new clients ("clients"?). They had a surprisingly long list of things to start with, but they took an hour (and hour that bled, as was apparently going to be their new standard, into two) to work out their work flows before they actually jumped into anything.</p><p>James had laughed, 'Can't we just message each other or text or whatever whenever we have questions? We've already got a bare bones process, anyway,' but Lily had shot him a withering look through the screen.</p><p>'No, we need a more detailed process.' She eyed him for a minute before she looked away and said airly, almost like it was an afterthought, 'And I don't even have your number anyway.'</p><p>He laughed and immediately rattled it off.</p><p>Lily… wasn't really even sure why she'd basically asked for it.</p><p>But number or not, they weren't going to just text one another. 'It's — look, I know we're working from home, but I'm trying to have some kind of work life balance here,' Lily said. 'I can't be working on work all the time, my head'll explode.'</p><p>'No, god.' James nodded fervently. 'I agree. You know what they say about all work and no play.'</p><p>Lily rolled her eyes at him, but that just made James' smile all the wider.</p><p>'I know. Hard to imagine me as a dull boy, but I assure you, Evans, it's possible.'</p><p>Despite that minor detour (and the one half an hour later when James was talking about his social media posting calendar and then took a hard left into a story about that tiger documentary everyone in the world seemed to be obsessed with at the moment (a story that, for James, ended with him talking about how he'd "love to pet a tiger, actually" and Lily didn't think, despite not having seen it, that that wasn't <em>at all </em>the moral of that bloody documentary)), they managed to get themselves a nice little working set up moving forward. It wasn't anything fancy — it still involved mostly throwing shit up into the Slack channel, but they had a nice little tracking spreadsheet now with tickboxes for each step in their process and, and this had been James' suggestion, <em>a column for notes </em>— but it was a process.</p><p>And then, officially, they were off to the races.</p><p>Lily felt like she and James were working flat out on these new projects, and, though she was tired, fucking exhausted, especially because she wasn't sleeping all that well these days for a reason she knew but refused to articulate to herself, she was grateful for something to do with her time. Was grateful to have something to do to distract herself from everything that was going on in the newspaper — and, now that she was thinking about it, she really needed to cancel, temporarily, her <em>Guardian </em>emails, because even deleting them was triggering these days.</p><p>But she was grateful for something to do.</p><p>Hell, she was grateful for work at all. For a paycheque.</p><p>And work, true to Minerva's word, had certainly been steady for digital, but the focus, by far, of Lily's work days was the work that she and James were doing, effectively, on the side.</p><p>She was in their Slack channel all day — the tab had earned "Never Closed" status at, probably, the fastest rate ever (and when she'd told James this, he'd laughed and said that that tab should get a "BAFTA or something") — and she didn't feel like more than an hour went by without her and James dropping something new there, be it a note to remember to do something, an update on the progress of one of their projects, or just a little DM to check in.</p><p>It was funny because, for all their time working together in the same office, for the few times that she and James had worked together <em>personally </em>on projects, she never felt like she had more of a sense of James Potter than she did right now, when they were god knows how far apart across town from one another chatting over Zoom what now was, basically, every few days to keep up with the pace of their work.</p><p>And like that, getting to know James better, there were some things — she wasn't going to lie — that were sort of alright about this quarantine thing. On top of figuring out how to work better with one of her colleagues, she wasn't battling with the bloody Central line to get to work every morning (<em>fuck </em>the Central line, fuck it literally into outer space), she was getting to spend more time hanging around with Marlene, was getting to sit and just have <em>time </em>in the morning, time to have a proper breakfast, time to read, time to stare out the window of her flat and watch the sun and do literally nothing. Without a commute she, very suddenly, had two hours back in her day every single day and, with nothing else to do, she'd had to find ways to entertain herself. Ways that, much to her surprise, mostly involved digging out things she'd used to enjoy and then throwing herself into them again with absolute abandon.</p><p>She'd unearthed her easel a week ago — a mistake, really, because now it was taking up half her bloody bedroom — and had started painting again, and it was shit, her painting, but it was something to do and she'd forgotten how much she enjoyed it. She was sketching just to do it. She was thinking about opening a fucking Etsy shop because <em>why not</em>.</p><p>There were some things she appreciated.</p><p>But then Marlene's pub closed on the 20th of March and, now, she's been home ever since. She looked listless for the first week, cooped up, and she started to adjust as they slid into April but, still, Lily worried.</p><p>And then Marlene started making bartending videos on TikTok and Lily was…. Well, she didn't know how to feel about that. But Marlene seemed happy. And Marlene's videos were confusingly popular.</p><p>Marlene had laughed when Lily told her as much and said it was because she was 'that perfect combination of hot as fuck and "talking about alcohol"' and so 'of course people were going to flock to her videos'.</p><p>And, too, Lily missed going out. She and Marlene took their one walk a day around, you know, but she missed popping into town to go to the massive Primark on Oxford Street just because, she missed wandering around the streets with nothing in mind for hours on end. It was strange seeing London like this, quiet and empty, and while there were things she appreciated about it — she was sure the foxes were having an absolute time — mostly, she missed London the way it was.</p><p>And Lily was also now realising just how much she missed the people that she worked with every day. How those people, like them or not (and some of them were decidedly <em>not</em>), were part of her life. A central part of her life, it turned out.</p><p>It was strange, realising that these people made up any part of her life at all, outside the eight hours a day that she spent at her little desk.</p><p>And, yeah, she was still getting to see them on Zoom and was still getting about a hundred thousand emails a week that proved, definitively, that these people who seemed to have disappeared had not, in fact, gone anywhere, but it was different, working from home.</p><p>There were positives, certainly, but there were drawbacks, too.</p><p>Like, while, yeah, she was getting to figure out working with James Potter, she found herself wishing — quietly, and just a few times — that she and James Potter were actually <em>working </em>together.</p><p>Like in the same room, heads bent, <em>working together</em>.</p><p>Because while she heard him laugh plenty whenever they were on Zoom, it just didn't ring out the same when it wasn't bouncing around their office, and she missed looking up and catching Serena's eye, one of her fellow graphic designers, and biting back a smirk, and she even missed — though, fucking hell, no one could ever tell her — the way that Helen used to stomp around the office whenever someone finished off the last of the water in the kettle and didn't fill it, like she was some office Sherlock Holmes who was going to start swabbing their fingers for kettle residue.</p><p>She didn't miss Tom in Accounts, but Tom in Accounts was a complete fucking creep.</p><p>Everyone else, though….</p><p>Still, Lily was determined to make the best of it. To do that quintessentially British thing of just <em>carrying on, </em>which made her gag a little, thinking about it like that, but she couldn't deny…. It was what she needed.</p><p>She let herself feel it whenever she was down, but she stayed home. She called her mum, called Mary, called Alice, called everyone in her bloody phone book, probably, she watched telly, she painted.</p><p>She did what she had to do.</p><p>And, hey — her paintings were getting better.</p><p>By mid-April, she and James had managed to roll out more than a dozen little advertising campaigns, most for the NHS charities, but some — like the one Lily had worked on last week and <em>finally </em>just finished late Friday afternoon and sent over to James so he could work his social media magic — for campaigns asking crafty people to make masks for the NHS and other care workers. A new sort of exhaustion had set in, one that was a combination of genuine tiredness from getting up and working every day and something else entirely that she thought, probably, was the result of not having left the house in a month, but she managed to get through each day and, honestly, she knew that that on its own was something to be grateful for.</p><p>That Wednesday, she and James had their regularly scheduled meeting — now starting at two instead of one and with more story detours and laughs than ever before — and, by the time she and James were finally wrapping up come four, Lily was ready to grab her sketch pad off her bedside table and just draw for a minute (with her laptop plainly in view, obviously, so she could keep a watchful eye on her work email). Lily was three quarters of the way to ringing off when James cleared his throat and said, 'Do you, uh — do you actually have a minute to chat for a bit?'</p><p>He hadn't talked to anyone, he said, in a few weeks, besides his flatmate, of course, and his mum, and he missed talking to people outside the apparently insane people he had in his immediate circle.</p><p>'Oh.' Lily cleared her throat and reached up to tuck a piece of hair back behind her ear. 'Yeah, sure. Do you, uh —' She shifted a little in her seat. Her back was bloody sore from sitting in her desk chair all the time — like she knew she did it at work all day, but Minerva had splurged and gotten them all those fancy ergonomic chairs a few years ago whereas Lily's chair was some cast off she'd gotten from… she couldn't even remember where. Somewhere shit.</p><p>Possibly out of an actual skip.</p><p>'Do you mind if I move to sit in my bed? My back is killing me.'</p><p>James touched a hand to his chest, an amused smile curving up at the corners of his lips despite the scandalised expression he was very plainly trying to affect. 'I can't believe you just invited a colleague to bed, Evans.'</p><p>Lily grabbed the laptop in one hand and held her fingers up at the camera with the other as she stood. She could hear James laughing over the speakers and could see him out of the corner of her eye, but she refused to look at him.</p><p>'You're a git,' she said, turning the laptop so that the camera was pointed towards the window rather than the rest of her bedroom. They'd been talking in her room for the last month, basically, but it felt weird to start showing him the rest of her bedroom space like it was nothing.</p><p>'That's true,' James said. He was still laughing and she could hear the way that the smile warmed his voice as she settled down against the cushions at the head of her bed. Sure enough, when she righted the camera, there he was, beaming at her.</p><p>'I'm also hot, though, so it balances out.'</p><p>Lily laughed, a loud shock of a sound, and the laptop, resting on her stomach, started shaking with the force of it. James just laughed right along with her, amusement shining bright in his eyes.</p><p>She shook her head at him, the smallest, slightly indulgent shake of the head, and shifted a little against the pillows until she found a comfortable spot. 'So, what did you want to talk about?'</p><p>James raised an eyebrow at her. 'Have you seen <em>Tiger King </em>yet?'</p><p>'Oh for fuck's sake.' Lily gave an exasperated sigh and James immediately started laughing again. 'No, I still haven't watched it. I'm probably not <em>going </em>to watch it.'</p><p>'No, Evans, why not? I need to know if you think Carole killed her husband.'</p><p>'Who knows.' Lily shrugged. 'I doubt me watching a documentary will tell me one way or the other.'</p><p>'Ugh, Lily. <em>Lily</em>.' James shook his head at her. 'That's — you're supposed to guess, at least. Use the <em>evidence</em>.'</p><p>'If I wanted to use evidence, I would have gone to law school,' Lily said. 'Or like… police school.' She didn't have a concrete reason why she wasn't watching that bloody documentary, not really, but she loved watching James squirm.</p><p>He dropped his head down onto one of his hands with a groan. 'You're killing me.'</p><p>Lily snorted. 'You're dramatic.'</p><p>'You don't understand how obsessed we are,' James said. 'Even my mum loves it.'</p><p>Lily laughed. 'Does she?'</p><p>James nodded. 'Dad won't watch it because he doesn't like seeing the cats in the cages like that, but I think Mum has about worn him down because he's tired of being out of the loop when she and I are banging on about it on the phone.'</p><p>'I can't believe you and your mum bullied your poor dad into watching that nonsense.'</p><p>'We didn't <em>bully </em>him.' James rolled his eyes, but there was a soft amusement in his face that was absolutely unmistakable. 'He's a grown man.'</p><p>'A grown man being made fun of by the people he loves best.' Lily shook her head tragically. 'A Shakespeare's level of tragedy.'</p><p>'<em>A Shakespeare</em>. I wasn't aware that you could use Willy Shakes as a unit of measure.'</p><p>'You can use anything as a unit of measure if you try hard enough,' Lily said. 'And I can't believe you just called him Willy Shakes.'</p><p>James just smiled at her. 'Sorry, I know there was more to that sentence, but I was thinking about using random things in my house as units of measure.'</p><p>Lily snorted. 'They should set that as a home task,' she said. 'The <em>Taskmasters </em>people.'</p><p>James put on his best Alex Horne voice. '"Measure a litre of water in the most impractical way".'</p><p>Lily laughed again. 'Exactly.'</p><p>'Honestly, I kind of want to do it now.'</p><p>'Of course you do.'</p><p>From there, their conversation derailed — assuming it was ever… railed… — into the mad things that they would have measured water with if this task ever became reality and then, after Lily suggested "men's size thirteen Nikes" and they both lost their sanity for at least a full minute and a half, they started proposing other bizarre tasks that they hoped would somehow manifest in the <em>Taskmaster</em> producers' brains.</p><p>'Who are you quarantining with?' Lily finally asked. She could make up tasks all night, but she felt like she was barely clinging onto the last threads of her sanity as it was and the best way to retain said threads was probably trying to steer back into normal conversation. 'You're not there by yourself, right?'</p><p>'No, no.' James shook his head and ran a hand through his hair again. She couldn't tell if he was intending to neaten it, but it still looked like a tornado had blown through it. 'My brother Sirius lives with me.'</p><p>'Aw.' Lily smiled at him. 'That's cute. Two brothers living together.'</p><p>James snorted. 'You probably wouldn't think it was cute if you actually knew Sirius.'</p><p>'Why? Is he a complete monster or something?'</p><p>James laughed. 'Or something.'</p><p>'Still, it's nice that you're not alone.'</p><p>'Yeah, I know.' He nodded slowly, a little solemnly. 'I think I'd go mental if I were stuck in the house alone. Sirius and I had gone back and forth for a while about whether he'd be quarantining with his boyfriend, but Remus is a doctor and so Remus and I both managed to talk him out of it.'</p><p>Lily frowned. 'I hope Remus isn't alone.'</p><p>'No,' James shook his head. 'His housemate is there, but she's a doctor, too, so they're both just, you know.' He made a vague sort of hand gesture with his hands. 'In the thick of it.'</p><p>They were both quiet for a minute. And Lily didn't know what James was thinking about, as he was just staring out of her screen at her, but Lily found herself thinking, over and over, about what it must be like in the hospitals right now.</p><p>How just… chaotic it all had to be.</p><p>'I'm glad we're raising money for the NHS,' she finally said softly.</p><p>James nodded, his expression, for once, completely earnest. 'Me, too.'</p><p>They looked at one another for a moment longer before James cleared his throat and, with it, brought a little bit of life back into his face. 'Who are you quarantining with?'</p><p>'My best friend, Marlene,' Lily said. She was smiling a little now, grateful for the fact that she was lucky enough to have someone who, yeah, might take the piss a bit, but someone who she loved as much as she loved Marlene. Someone who made her laugh as much as Marlene did.</p><p>Someone who knew when Lily was getting a little too in her own head and made her do something silly — like come up with a new drink series for her to put up on TikTok — to get her mind out of it again.</p><p>James' smile was a mile wide, like he knew exactly where her head had gone. 'I'm glad you've got her.'</p><p>'Yeah,' Lily said, her smile softening a little bit. 'Me, too.'</p><p>They chatted for a little while longer about the things they'd been up to while they'd all been stuck at home — Lily told James about Marlene's TikTok's and James immediately shrieked and said that he was going to 'look up her account <em>immediately</em>' and he'd shrieked <em>again </em>when Lily told him she was painting again because he 'needed to see her art, please' because 'it's sure to be brilliant and I need that in my life these days' — and while they had a few exciting things to talk about (see: TikTok, but also Sirius had, apparently, taken it upon himself to revert to the Year Four version of himself and had started building towers on the kitchen table out of whatever material he could find), mostly they were both doing the same old boring things as everyone else in the world.</p><p>Netflix. Jigsaw puzzles. Enormous group Zooms with their friends that they pretended were anything like going down the pub together. Too much time on social media. Fantasising about what they'd do the minute they were allowed back outside again.</p><p>It was an eclectic mix of activities.</p><p>It was nearing six by the time Lily actually looked over at the clock in the corner of her screen and she chuckled softly under her breath.</p><p>'We've been Zooming for almost four hours.'</p><p>James laughed and she saw his gaze travel up to the corner of his own screen as he checked the time. 'Holy shit,' he said. He was smiling, plainly amused. 'I haven't talked to anyone this long since I used to steal the phone to talk to my girlfriend in Upper Sixth.'</p><p>Lily snorted. 'Is that all I am to you? Your sixth form girlfriend?'</p><p>'I'll have you know that my sixth form girlfriend was very important to me,' James said. 'I'd say the comparison is an honour.'</p><p>'Maybe you were a better boyfriend than my sixth form boyfriend, then,' Lily said, laughing. 'Tommy was horrible.'</p><p>James shook his head at her, faux-shock on his face. 'I can't believe you dated a Tommy.'</p><p>'We all make mistakes, Potter,' Lily said, laughing a little.</p><p>'Clearly,' James said. '<em>Tommy </em>is a name for a baby.'</p><p>'Oh? So what sort of name should I have been looking for, then?'</p><p>'A nice, classic name,' James said. 'I hear James' are usually nice.'</p><p>Lily snorted. 'Do you, now?'</p><p>He nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 'I do.'</p><p>She rolled her eyes at him but, still, she couldn't stop laughing. 'I'm going now,' she said. 'I've got to eat dinner before my stomach caves in on itself.'</p><p>James laughed and nodded at her. 'Yeah, I suppose that's fair. Can't have your stomach eating itself.'</p><p>'Especially because it would be your fault if you kept me,' Lily said. 'You don't want that on your conscience.'</p><p>'No, god.' James shook his head vigorously. 'Absolutely not. Get out of here.'</p><p>And there was something about the way he said it — Lily couldn't put her finger on it — but she immediately started laughing. 'I just —' James was looking at her, a quizzical expression on his face, but that was just making her laugh harder.</p><p>'I just remembered that <em>Bob's Burgers</em> thing where he's like "Scat" and Teddy's like —' She tried to scat, but she was still laughing too hard to really get it to work.</p><p>James, much to his credit, though, immediately understood what she was trying to do. He scatted a few bars for her and Lily started laughing harder, pointing at the screen. 'Yes,' she said, through her gasps of laughter, 'exactly.'</p><p>It took her a minute to calm down, something that was incredibly hard to do when James kept catching her eye and then smiling again — every single time it made Lily fall apart all over again — but, eventually, she had managed to settle herself down enough that she could talk without having to work the words in between her laughter.</p><p>'I'm glad we talked,' she said. She could still hear the laughter buried in her voice, but she hoped that James knew just how much she meant that. It had been nice, nicer than she'd anticipated, talking to him. And talking to him about literally nothing, too, it had been….</p><p>It had been exactly what she'd needed.</p><p>'I'm glad we talked, too,' James said. 'I really needed that.'</p><p>'We should make this a regular thing,' Lily said. She'd tacked it on casually, without really thinking about it, but the moment she suggested it, she started to worry that it was, maybe, actually a weird sort of thing to —</p><p>'Yeah,' James smiled at her, another wide, toothy smile that immediately eased the tension that had been creeping up in Lily's chest. 'We absolutely should.'</p><p>They sat there in silence again, just looking at each other for a long moment, before James finally drew in a deep breath and that, the sound and the way that he rose, ever so slightly, in the frame, seemed to knock Lily out of whatever stupor she'd apparently fallen into.</p><p>'Okay, I'm going to go eat.'</p><p>'Right.' James nodded, all business-like. 'Can't have you self-cannibalising.'</p><p>Lily breathed a laugh. 'Exactly.' She was quiet for a beat, just a moment, and she let herself sit there and look at him for a second before she said, 'Bye, James.'</p><p>And James smiled at her, a bright, immediate smile that, good <em>god</em>, Lily felt right down to her toes. 'Bye, Lily.'</p><p>And, with one more final wave at the camera, Lily clicked out of Zoom. She watched the indicator light on her webcam switch off and, though she had a brief moment of madness where she thought that she should check her work email, she finally convinced herself to just shut her laptop.</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning, Lily was sat alone at the kitchen table until around half even when Marlene finally rolled out of bed.</p><p>'Hey, babe.' Lily flicked her gaze up at Marlene and smiled. Marlene's blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a haphazard bun and she had a crease mark across her cheek from her pillow. 'Welcome to the land of the living.'</p><p>Marlene held her fingers up at her and shuffled past her into the kitchen.</p><p>Lily listened to Marlene moving around in the kitchen for a few minutes, the loud rushing sound of the kettle coming to a boil, the clink of a mug against the worktop, and, after a minute, the steady drip of her pour-over becoming the soothing background noise Lily never knew she needed. Marlene came to sit at the dining chair opposite a few minutes later, coffee in one hand and buttered toast in the other and, after a bracing sip of what had to be lava-hot coffee, Marlene flicked her gaze up towards Lily's.</p><p>'So you and Romeo were on Zoom pretty long last night.'</p><p>Lily immediately felt her cheeks go pink. 'What?'</p><p>She knew exactly what she was talking about, but sometimes if you played dumb, Marlene let you free.</p><p>Like a bear if you played dead.</p><p>Marlene cocked her eyebrow at her, the expression no less softened by the fact that Marlene was still clearly half asleep. 'That guy from your work. We both know you fancy the fuck out of him.'</p><p>Lily laughed, but it was the slightly manic, shouty laugh of someone who has absolutely been caught out.</p><p>'What are you talking about?' Lily carried on laughing a little to herself because, of course, crazed, muttered giggling is the best way to get someone to believe your version of reality is, in fact, the true one. 'James and I are just colleagues.'</p><p>'Well, James is a colleague you want to fuck the minute we're allowed within two metres of each other.' Marlene took a sip of her coffee as though her tone, and her words, weren't absolutely fucking devastating.</p><p>Lily just sat there, all dry mouthed, gaping at her like a fucking carp.</p><p>'I — no, I don't.'</p><p>Marlene snorted and took another sip of her coffee. 'Well, he certainly wants to fuck you, then.'</p><p>'I — what are you talking about?'</p><p>'Please.' Marlene's smile was so wide that it took up the whole bottom half of her face. 'I hear him flirting with you through the walls almost every day at this point. And last night —' Marlene fanned herself sarcastically with her free hand.</p><p>'We're not <em>flirting </em>—'</p><p>Marlene grinned and took another, distinctly pointed, sip of her coffee. 'Sure, Jan.'</p><p>Lily shot her a look. 'You can't "Sure, Jan" me any time I say something you don't agree with.'</p><p>Marlene, the bastard, just smirked at her and mouthed <em>Sure, Jan</em> before taking another long drag of coffee.</p><p>It was silly, but she felt a little bit nervous when she and James got on their scheduled call the next afternoon. They were just talking about their campaigns — not even, you know, anything outside work — but there was something about knowing that she was going to see him again after having both a) broken down some kind of wall between them and, b) having had Marlene tease her about her apparent attraction to him all in a matter of twenty-four hours.</p><p>Or, even worse, a matter of, like, eighteen hours.</p><p>There was something about holding all <em>that </em>in her head and then getting on Zoom to talk to James like she wasn't thinking anything of the sort.</p><p>And, of course, that <em>something </em>made itself quite plain, apparently, on Lily's face.</p><p>'You seem weird today,' James said. They'd just finished talking about the next phase of their plans for the NHS charities advertisement and had been getting ready to start talking about the crowdfunded campaigns, but now he was sitting there looking at her with this expression on his face like he was trying to unpack her. Or, like, get her to peel back one or two of her layers.</p><p>Which… good luck.</p><p>'I'm not weird,' Lily said. 'My back just hurts.' She twisted a little in her seat as though proving her words, though she wasn't entirely lying to him about it. She was sitting at her desk again today and her back was really not even remotely happy about the situation.</p><p>Part of her was tempted to grab a pillow or sit on her bed again, but she wanted to try and maintain the division between desk Lily and bed Lily wherever possible.</p><p>Especially because she was already feeling like there was some blending between the two where James was concerned.</p><p>'God,' James, too, stretched a little, his left arm falling outside the frame. 'My back is killing me, too. My home chairs are nothing, apparently, compared to our desk chairs at work.'</p><p>'We should see if Minerva will let us all buy better chairs. Like just expense them.'</p><p>James snorted. 'Yeah, okay. You ask her, let me know what she says.'</p><p>A soft, teasing smile grew on Lily's lips. 'I can't believe that you're scared of her.'</p><p>James scoffed and made an indignant sort of face. 'I'm not <em>scared </em>of her —'</p><p>'You literally are,' Lily said. She was laughing now.</p><p>James shook his head. 'No way, Evans.'</p><p>'I've seen you get cheeky with plenty of the other execs in meetings and stuff,' Lily was remembering it as she was talking and she couldn't believe how much she'd apparently kept in the dusty old boxes in the back of her brain, 'but I've never seen you do that with Minerva.'</p><p>'She doesn't take as well to cheek as some of the others,' James said. He was smiling a little which suggested that, at some point, he'd tried his hand at it.</p><p>'I don't know…. I manage to get away with a little cheek here and there.' Lily was barely containing the smile on her face now, but, still, she managed to keep her expression to a brightness in her eyes, a lightness on her cheeks rather than an actual smile.</p><p>'You always tend to get away with a little cheek,' James said. 'You're quite serious on the surface of things and it throws people off.'</p><p>'<em>Serious</em>.'</p><p>'Well, not —' James laughed and ran a hand through his hair. 'You're just not caught dicking around at work as often as I am.'</p><p>'Well, that's certainly true,' Lily said.</p><p>James smiled at her. 'That's one of the good things about being home. I can juggle all I want here without getting called out.'</p><p>If Lily had been drinking something, she would have spat it out. As she was, she sort of sputtered out a loud laugh and reached up to brush her hair back behind her ear. 'I'd forgotten about the juggling,' she said. 'I can't believe Minerva didn't fire you. Or chuck your juggling balls out the window straight into the Thames.'</p><p>'I don't think she could have hit the Thames from our office, do you?'</p><p>Lily laughed. 'I don't know. I expect the height of the building would help her overcome some of the distance.'</p><p>James hummed, an expression on his face that was a little too thoughtful. 'I'll have to get back to you on that.'</p><p>Lily breathed a laugh and raised an eyebrow at him. 'What are you going to do?'</p><p>'I'm going to run the numbers,' James said, his tone suddenly all business again. 'But let's talk about that mask-making campaign before we get completely sidetracked by my mathematical genius.'</p><p>Lily rolled her eyes but, still, she flipped over to the appropriate tab in their Slack channel.</p><p>Half an hour later, after she and James had hung up, Lily pushed herself up out of her desk chair and made her way, finally, out of her room. She didn't have any more meetings for the day — and thank god because she'd been on Zoom <em>literally </em>all morning and she felt like she was three seconds away from cracking if she had to deal with one more person with an unmuted microphone crunching away on their end of the line — and she thought that, probably, she could take her laptop and her drawing tablet (she just remembered to grab it off her desk before she wandered out into the living room) and sit on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon.</p><p>'Hey.' Marlene smiled at her when she walked out of her room, her gaze flicking down to the pile of electronics in Lily's hand. 'Meetings over?'</p><p>'Finally.' Lily dropped heavily down onto the couch, cringing a little at the clunking noises her laptop and drawing tablet made as they smacked together on impact. 'I just have some sketches to finish.'</p><p>She looked up at the television screen as she set up her tablet. 'What're you watching?'</p><p>'That new Aisling Bea show,' Marlene said. 'Or, it came out last year, but I didn't watch it then.'</p><p>'Oh, I love her,' Lily said. She watched the show for a few seconds before she glanced back down at her screen. 'What episode is this?'</p><p>'Three?' Marlene grabbed the remote off the table and brought the menu up along the top of the screen. 'Yeah,' she dropped the remote back down with a clatter. 'Three.'</p><p>'I'll have to start over at some point,' Lily said. She swiped her fingers across the trackpad to wake up her laptop. 'It looks good.'</p><p>'Do you want me to turn it off?' Marlene was looking at her, Lily could see out of the corner of her eye, and Lily turned to meet her gaze.</p><p>'I don't care, I'll just watch the first three later. You were here first.'</p><p>She and Marlene chatted a little bit while Lily worked, making observations about the show or else talking about random things that popped to mind, but, mostly, they sat there quietly, letting the television fill the silence between them. It was new, drawing like this, or, at least, drawing like this for work, and she liked the difference that this made. The ease of this moment and the quiet comfort made it so that the lines almost felt softer in her hands as she drew them.</p><p>It wasn't that things were necessarily coming out any better or that they were even coming any easier than normal, but the whole thing was just….</p><p>It was softer.</p><p>She'd just finished a rough sketch of her first few pieces — they were just outlines, she'd hadn't even coloured them in yet — when she got a WhatsApp notification pop up along the top right corner of her laptop.</p><p>
  <em>James Potter</em>
</p><p>She smiled a little, her eyebrows pinching together in curiosity, and, after flipping her drawing pencil around a little in her hands, tapped on the notification to open the app.</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: she'd get the ball a little over halfway there</em>
</p><p>Lily looked down at her screen for a minute, a bemused expression on her face.</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: what</em>
</p><p>James replied almost immediately.</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: minnie</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: I might be a litlte off re the launch angle and that makes a big difference in terms of the overall distance but I stand by my numbers</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I can't believe you actually calculated it</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: I todl you i would</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: and I didn't do a level physics for nothing</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: …</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: you did a level physics so you could figure out how to chuck things off buildings</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: ? yes ?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: why else would anyone do a level physics</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I'm sure there are a million reasons people do it</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: well it's obviously an invalid reason unless it's "to learn how to chuck things off buildings"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: **to figure out how</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: lol yes, yes, so sorry</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: I should have respected the original quote</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: thank you</em>
</p><p>Lily must have been smiling at her screen because Marlene suddenly turned to look at her.</p><p>'Flirting again?'</p><p>Lily's cheeks flushed a soft pink but, this time, she didn't think that she could deny it. At least… not fully.</p><p>'I don't know. Does talking about A Level physics count as flirting?'</p><p>'Ugh, god.' Marlene tipped her head back onto the sofa cushions and looked back to the television again. 'I hope not.'</p><p>Lily laughed softly under her breath, but she couldn't….</p><p>Well, she hoped that Marlene was wrong on that score.</p>
<hr/><p>Now that she and James had broken their texting seal, it seemed like they managed to find things to say to one another at least a few times a week.</p><p>Most of the time, it wasn't anything groundbreaking — it was observations James made out his window in, apparently, East London, links to Marlene's TikToks that Lily shared because she was particularly impressed with them, pictures of animals James had seen on Twitter and felt it was <em>utterly imperative </em>(his words) to share immediately — but she liked the consistency of their conversation. Liked waking up and finding some message he'd sent her in the middle of the night that was, as was usually the case for these late night messages, some picture or description of something mad he and Sirius had done in order to pass the time.</p><p>She liked the way that it brought him into her life in a different way. Liked how it made her feel like she knew him differently.</p><p>Because it wasn't like there were different men here — James was the same person, almost to a fault, from work life to personal life and Lily didn't know how he did it — but she liked the informality of this kind of communication. Liked how it made her feel like they were connected to one another outside of work.</p><p>Like all their conversation, she supposed, weren't down to whether or not one of them was active in their Slack channel.</p><p>And texting, too, seemed to really unlock that side of them that had popped out that day after their Zoom chat back in April, the one where they'd — or, uh, <em>she'd </em>— sat on her bed for nearly two hours and talked about nothing. Texting gave them an avenue to talk about the other things that were on their minds, the things that weren't related to their work or the feelings that their work sometimes brought up for them.</p><p>Texting gave them an outlet. A space to forget about the very real things that they were doing and to just…. Breathe.</p><p>She liked having that space.</p><p>And, even more than that, she liked having that space with James.</p><p>So they texted more and, slowly, Lily started to relax the work Lily/life Lily separation that she had going for herself (at least… she started to relax it where James was concerned). Because there were a few days when she didn't have any meetings on the calendar except for her meeting with James where Lily gave into the feeling that she couldn't be bothered, actually, to get dressed for the day, there were days when she couldn't bring herself to sit at her desk and she floated from couch to bed and back again. There were days where she wasn't the polished sort of person that she usually liked to pretend to be, and she found that showing James the bits underneath, the Lily that she really was underneath the professional gleam….</p><p>She liked it.</p><p>Marlene was getting smirk-ier by the day — the worst (or, if you were Marlene, best) day had been when Lily and James had been Zooming on the couch and Marlene had walked out of her room to them both giggling like children about something completely unrelated to work — but Lily didn't actually mind the teasing. It made her blush a little, sure, but she was so pale she was practically translucent — blushing just came with the territory.</p><p>And Marlene's teasing made her feel like there was something backing up the feelings that Lily was finally starting to acknowledge. Not on her side — Lily knew that she was feeling the things she was feeling — but on James'. Like, it might make her blush all the way up to her roots, but there was something about Marlene's little comments about how much she thought James fancied her. It bolstered Lily's confidence, made her feel more sure in the things that she was seeing in him.</p><p>Not that she was unsure of herself, exactly, it was just that….</p><p>Well, she wanted to be sure.</p><p>And sometimes it helped — it really helped — when you got an outside opinion. Or two.</p><p>
  <em>29 April </em>
</p><p>
  <em>19:03</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: apparently I'm annoying Sirius again</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: oh no what are you doing</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: ! how dare you accuse me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: you don't even know him and yet you take his side</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I know YOU Potter, and I know that you have the ability to be VERY annoying</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: that's so hurtful</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: now I'm not even going to tell you what I was doing</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: nonononono come on please</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: nope</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: couldn't possibly</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: you're no fun</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: now, that's just a boldfaced lie</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: (apparently I've been talking about you too much)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: excuse me Mr POtter I've never lied in my life</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: (oh really?)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: "no, yeah, I'm almost done with the skteches Minerva" - Lily Evans, definitely not almost done the sketches because she's been too busy hanging out with one (1) social media nerd, staff meeting, April 2020</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: (yeah…..)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I resent that</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: (and so uh… what was his recommendation?)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: (like what should I do about it or? shut the fuck up, mainly)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: (anything besides the mainly thing)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: (he did mutter a few things about post-quarantine, yeah)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: (hmm)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: (my thoughts exactly)</em>
</p><p>It wasn't a definite thing, not by any means, but it was….</p><p>It was something.</p><p>And it was something that Lily found herself thinking about quite a lot as the last few days of April dragged into May.</p><p>'You should just ask him out,' Marlene said. They were sitting on the sofa, enormous bowls of curry in hand, trying their best to eat it without dropping any of the sauce onto the sofa cushions. Marlene was a surprisingly good cook — she took offence every time Lily worded it like that — but it was still not as good as the curry from their favourite place down the road (something even Marlene admitted, however grudgingly).</p><p>'I just —' Lily didn't need to pretend like she didn't know who Marlene was talking about anymore. 'What if I ask him out and he says no and then it's awkward? Like, we're still in this little workgroup together and we're going to be going back to the office eventually.'</p><p>'Yeah, maybe in 2021.'</p><p>Lily shot her a look. 'Marlene.'</p><p>Marlene held up her fork in surrender. 'I'm just saying.'</p><p>Lily had a moment where she'd wanted to snap — <em>well don't just say </em>or <em>can we at least pretend we're going to get out of here </em>— but she made herself take a moment to pause. To breathe.</p><p>Yeah, they'd been in here forever already, but they weren't going to get through whatever remaining time they had if they started snapping at each other about stupid shit.</p><p>'But yeah, Lils, you should just ask him out,' Marlene said. Her voice was a little softer now, a little more earnest. Lily turned a little on the sofa so that she could see her more clearly.</p><p>'You think so?'</p><p>'Yeah.' Marlene nodded and lifted another bite of curry to her lips. 'I really do.'</p><p>And while part of her was sure that Marlene was right, had <em>known, </em>for a while, that Marlene was right, they were halfway through May now, though, and Lily hadn't said a thing. It wasn't that she was scared about asking people out in general — almost every boyfriend she had, now that she was thinking back on it, she'd been the initiator — but there was something different about James for her.</p><p>This wasn't some <em>across the pub, we're halfway drunk and you're hot, why don't we get dinner tomorrow night</em> sort of thing, this was a <em>I see you every day at work and I never realised that the vague sort of off kilter feeling I feel around you is… well… attraction</em>.</p><p>James wasn't someone who she could wipe out of her life with one swipe of her finger across their contact card in her phone, he was someone who she was going to have to see every day unless one of them got another job. And they weren't on separate ends on the company, either, and now they were working together directly and it just….</p><p>Things were complicated. And so she hesitated.</p><p>And then she kept hesitating for, like, almost a month.</p><p>'I can see your brain working,' Marlene said, raising her fork again and pointing it in the direction of Lily's head. 'Stop thinking so much.'</p><p>'I'm not. I'm just thinking about,' she turned to look at the television again and tilted her bowl towards the screen. 'I'm thinking about Chris O'Dowd.'</p><p>Marlene barked a laugh and shoveled another bite of curry into her mouth. 'Bullshit. If you were thinking about Chris O'Dowd, I'll eat this fucking fork.'</p><p>Lily humphed.</p><p>'Look.' Marlene shifted on the sofa so that she was sat completely sideways facing Lily. They were sat so close together that her shin was sandwiched up against the outside of Lily's thigh. 'I know it's not, like, if the date goes badly or he says no that you can just Homer Simpson back into a hedge and never see him again.'</p><p>Lily laughed and shook her head. 'Nope.'</p><p>'But that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a go.' Marlene said. The look on her face was surprisingly serious, intensely earnest, and Lily could probably count on one hand the number of times that Marlene had looked at her like that over the course of their now, christ, decade long friendship.</p><p>'He likes you, Lily. I know you know it and <em>I know it </em>because I hear him flirting his arse off every single time that you're on Zoom.'</p><p>'We're mostly talking about work —'</p><p>'Yeah, but then he's just speaking your flirt language, isn't he? Talking about <em>productivity </em>and <em>cross-promotion</em>.'</p><p>Lily reached over and slapped Marlene's knee with the back of her hand, but that just made Marlene's smile all the wider.</p><p>'He likes you. He likes you <em>a lot</em>. And I honestly don't think — even if we're reading him wrong here, which we aren't — I don't think that he's the sort of bloke that would hold it against you if things fell apart. He's not that creepy guy that used to lowkey stalk you in uni.'</p><p>'Ugh,' Lily looked down into her bowl and stabbed another piece of chicken with her fork. 'I forgot about him.'</p><p>'I didn't.' Marlene tapped the side of her head. 'He's on my list.'</p><p>Lily rolled her eyes. 'Stop.'</p><p>Marlene just laughed. 'But seriously, I don't think he's like that. I think it would be fine if things didn't work out. A little awkward, probably, but a little bit of awkward isn't the worst thing in the world.'</p><p>'It would certainly make things at work more interesting,' Lily said. 'I'd have something to tell you about from work every day.'</p><p>'See, exactly. I wouldn't have to hear about any more marketing executives blowing their tops because they didn't like how you drew exactly what they asked you to and, instead, I'd get to hear about your sordid office affair.'</p><p>'Wouldn't that only be if James and I worked out and then we were sneaking around the office, like, fucking each other on things?'</p><p>'See, I benefit from this either way.'</p><p>Lily laughed again and shook her head and, when she exhaled, she felt something like clarity settle over her.</p><p>'I guess you're right,' she said. She moved her fork around absently in her bowl. 'He's — I mean, you're right, I don't think that he'd be the type to go all Men's Rights Activist on me if we ended up breaking up.'</p><p>'Definitely not.' Marlene had a mouthful of food and her words were a little muffled, but Lily understood her all the same.</p><p>She looked down at her lap for a moment, the corner of her lip between her teeth. She was still feeling a little nervous about all this but, more than anything, there was a kind of resolve in her gut now, a determination to finally do something, to say something.</p><p>There were a million things that she could worry about in the back of her brain — like why he hadn't said anything, why he hadn't asked her out — but when she let herself think about it, she realised that it wasn't like he'd been slow in giving her signs.</p><p>He was a flirty person by nature, she thought, but there was definitely something different about the way that he was flirting with her. There was definite intention behind it when he was flirting with her.</p><p>Like he was doing it on purpose instead of just, you know, accidentally charming her.</p><p>And he was talking about her to Sirius and had made a point to tell <em>her </em>that he was talking about her….</p><p>'Yeah, alright.' Lily nodded and smiled a little as she picked her gaze back up to meet Marlene's. 'I'll ask him out tomorrow.'</p><p>'Finally. Because, ugh,' Marlene flipped back around so that she was facing the tv again, her side now flush against Lily's, 'I am not the motivational pep-talk giving type.'</p><p>Lily leant her head over so that it rested gently against the side of Marlene's. She left it there for a second, two, before she straightened up again and starting building another bite on her fork.</p><p>'Well, you're very good at it for not being the type.'</p><p>'Of course,' Marlene laughed a little. 'But I'm good at everything.'</p><p>Lily laughed out loud at that and, when Marlene flashed her a smile, Lily had to admit. She was feeling a hell of a lot better, so maybe Marlene was, at least a little, good at everything.</p>
<hr/><p>As much as she knew Marlene was right — and as much as she'd agreed to do this in the first place — Lily felt more than a little on edge the next day.</p><p>She and James had a meeting scheduled for later that afternoon, just your normal, run of the mill meeting where they were going to talk about normal, run of the mill things, but no matter how normal that part of their conversation was going to be, Lily couldn't stop thinking about how she was going to somehow slip in the fact that she'd like to go on a date with him.</p><p>Or… well, she'd like to go on a virtual date with him.</p><p>Because she wasn't going to wait months, thank you very much.</p><p>And despite her nerves, the meeting did, actually, go quite well — they talked about the feedback they'd been getting from their clients, and, though they knew they were already taking on a lot, they also started talking about how they wanted to decide to take on new clients.</p><p>'We've had so many emails — or, at least, I know I've had emails,' Lily said. She sounded like she was begging him a little bit because she knew that it was stupid to take on anyone else when she and James were barely coping as it was with this side project <em>and </em>all their actual work.</p><p>'No, yeah, I've had emails, too.' James ran a hand through his hair. 'And some of them are pretty simple asks, like we can just buy advertising space on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and then push their already pretty decent images, but most of them —'</p><p>'Yeah, I know.' LIly sighed and they were both quiet for a moment. She didn't like the idea of turning anyone down, not now, and she knew that James didn't like it either, but she just — between the two of them….</p><p>'If we want to take on anyone else, I think we need to bring this back to Minerva. See if we can't get this initiative folded back into something larger and maybe get us more help.'</p><p>James gasped dramatically, though there was a soft smile playing at the corner of his lips. 'You want to go back to the Man?'</p><p>Lily laughed. 'Piss off. We work for The Man. And anyway, yes, because there's a small committee or something, I think — Minerva set it up when she got here, if my memory serves, and — I heard Sarah talking about it once, I don't really remember all the details, I'd have to ask her. But it could be more people power, which is what we need. And if we tie it to something existing —'</p><p>'It gives this more lasting power,' James said, nodding slowly. 'I see your point.'</p><p>They wrote an email to Sarah together before Lily sent it, CCing James, and they crossed their fingers that Lily had, in fact, remembered enough of the details about this alleged committee that it might end up getting them some help.</p><p>'I'll miss our one on one chats, though,' James said. He was smiling, definitely joking, but there was something a little earnest about him then, too. It was the soft way he was looking at her, the slightest catch in his voice there at the end.</p><p>He really was going to miss it just being the two of them. He <em>liked </em>it just being the two of them.</p><p>Lily drew in a deep breath. 'Yeah, I know.' She paused for a moment, and let the silence hang, thick and tense, in the air between them. 'I'm going to miss it, too.'</p><p>They were quiet again, and there was an anticipation there, a tension, there was something sitting just between them, unsaid, and Lily knew what it was on her side and she wasn't sure if <em>that </em>was why it was feeling so tense — i.e.; if it was only feeling tense for her — or if James was feeling it, too.</p><p>He didn't look tense, if she could judge just by looking at him. He was just looking at her, same as ever, his gaze soft, his smile absent, but written into every single line and feature on his face. He didn't <em>look </em>tense.</p><p>And Lily knew that she was feeling this because she could feel the pressure now, the pressure of not having said anything, of having looked at the clock and realised that they only had a few more minutes left to talk (not that the clock had ever been a barrier to them before), of knowing that, soon, she was going to have to swallow her anxiety and just tell him how she was fucking feeling already —</p><p>'I think it'll be good for us. Having help.' James' voice was quiet, much more so than usual, and Lily felt herself leaning in a little towards her screen, despite the fact that it was going to have literally no bearing on her ability to hear him. 'But, yeah.' He brushed his hand through his hair again and Lily smiled, just a little, when a bit of his fringe flopped oddly back down onto his forehead. 'I've really liked getting to work with you on this. Getting to know you.'</p><p>Lily nodded slowly.</p><p>'I've really liked it, too. And, uh,' christ, was her mouth always this dry? It was literally like the Sahara in there. 'If this is too awkward, or, uh, too <em>forward</em>, please, stop me, but uhm —' She wetted her bottom lip, her gaze flicking, embarrassed, from her keyboard to James' face and back again.</p><p>She needed to just —</p><p>She needed to just say it.</p><p>'I know that this is weird because we're in quarantine and we're colleagues,' she was rushing this, the words were tumbling together so quickly they were rolling in on one another, 'but maybe we could, like, have a virtual date or something? If you want? Or not, that's,' Lily tucked a piece of hair back behind her ear and looked down at her keyboard again. 'Whatever.'</p><p>She could feel the urge to carry on talking bubbling in the back of her throat, but she knew that continuing to throw words into the void wasn't exactly going to help her communicate what she was asking any better. She was still looking down at her keyboard, tracing the outlines of the keys, and she could see James in her periphery, but she couldn't tell what he was doing, couldn't really see the expression that he was making, and so finally, after what might have been a single, solitary second or five full minutes, Lily finally looked up and let her eyes find his again.</p><p>The moment their eyes connected, James smiled at her, and Lily —</p><p>'You want to go on a virtual date with me?' His smile widened and Lily felt her cheeks, somehow, flush that much darker.</p><p>'It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.'</p><p>James ignored her.</p><p>'You want to go on a virtual date with me.'</p><p>'Alright.' Lily dropped her chin down onto her palm, and, though she was trying to sound at least a little put together, she was smiling so wide that she could barely form words at this point. 'Don't go banging on about it.'</p><p>'Oh, I'll definitely bang on about it a little bit, Evans.' James was smirking, a glint of mischief in his eyes. 'The hottest woman in London just asked me out.'</p><p>Lily laughed and she turned her cheek on her hand so that she was looking away from the screen. 'Shut up.'</p><p>'Not a chance.' James pushed back from his desk, spinning around slightly in his seat, and he was smiling like he'd just won the bloody lottery. 'I've got half a mind to shout it out my window right now.'</p><p>Lily breathed a laugh as she dropped her hand back down to the desk in front of her. 'I'll bet your neighbours would love that.'</p><p>James waved a hand. 'They've heard me and Sirius rolling around in here for the last two months, I bet they'd welcome the good news.'</p><p>Lily rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, <em>god, </em>she was fucking smiling, and James —</p><p>He was looking at her with something like awe.</p><p>'I can't believe you just asked me out.'</p><p>Lily smirked, just a little. 'I can take it back if you like?'</p><p>'No, no, no.' James pulled himself back towards his desk. 'Definitely don't take it back.'</p><p>'Good.' Lily brushed a piece of hair back behind her ears. 'Because I don't <em>want </em>to take it back.'</p><p>James beamed at her. 'So what should we do? When do you want to have this date?'</p><p>Lily sighed. 'See, that's the thing, I don't know what a virtual date entails, exactly. Like, all the good bits about the date can't happen virtually.'</p><p>James breathed a soft laugh, this one a little huskier than normal. 'Evans, you'll make me blush.'</p><p>Lily snorted and held her fingers up at him. That just made him smile all the wider.</p><p>'We could do, like, dinner and a movie?' he said. 'Both just make dinner and then watch the same thing?'</p><p>'Oh, yeah.' Lily'd be eating a fucking, like, chip butty if she had to cook for herself, but maybe she'd be lucky and there'd be leftovers from something Marlene made in the fridge. 'Let's do that.'</p><p>'And — wait, can I get sort of soppy for a minute?'</p><p>Lily laughed, a little surprised. 'You were just shouting about how I'm the most beautiful woman in the city and <em>that </em>wasn't soppy?'</p><p>James shook his head. 'That's just true. <em>This</em>,' he said, laying extra emphasis on the word because Lily had started laughing again, 'is the actual soppy bit.'</p><p>'Well, alright, then, go on.'</p><p>'What if we cooked the same thing? Like found a recipe, cooked it together, and then watched whatever? Because then it would be like we — I don't know, like you came over and I cooked for you.'</p><p>And as distracting as she found the idea of James cooking for her — because, lord, <em>that </em>was bloody appealing wasn't it — she still maintained enough of her sanity to give James a single bit of crucial information.</p><p>'I'm — James, I'm not the best cook.'</p><p>It was <em>the </em>understatement of the century, but James didn't need to know that.</p><p>James waved his hand again. 'Don't worry, I've more than got that covered in the relationship.' He smiled at her, and it was almost like he was one of those birds on that mating show Marlene had made her watch a few weeks back. All preening and proud.</p><p>'Oh, so this is a relationship now?'</p><p>James laughed. 'Well, not officially, I guess. I reckon I've got to impress you on this date first?</p><p>Lily laughed again and nodded. 'Yeah. Yeah, I guess you'd better.'</p><p>'Great.' James clapped his hands together and leant back in his seat. 'So when are we having this date?'</p><p>Lily grinned and shook her head at him. 'How about this Friday?'</p><p>
  <em>15 May 2020</em>
</p><p>
  <em>13:22</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: shit we haven't pickd a recipe yet</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: fucking hell</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: you haven't gone to the shop yet have you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: no, not yet</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: but ok I'm googling whatare you in the mood for</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: How to Cook the Perfect Vegetable Tagine | Felicity Cloake </em>
</p><p>
  <em> food/2020/mar/25/how-to-cook-the-perfect-vegetable-tagine-recipe</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: just that specifically or?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: lol no I'm googling too</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: oh</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I'm an idiot</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: incorrect, please try again</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: ? </em>
  <em>ﾟﾘﾒ</em>
  <em>?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: look I wasn't lying the other day, I'm not a GREAT cook</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: Hot Pasta for Cold Days | Lello Favuzzi</em>
</p><p>
  <em> food/2020/mar/14/pasta-recipes-pappardelle-wild-boar-ragu-pumpkin-lasagne-gnocchi-taleggio-bigoli-oxtail-tomato</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: pasta is much more my speed</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: Pesto sounds good?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: Chicken Pesto Pasta recipe | Jamie Oliver pasta recipes</em>
</p><p>
  <em> recipes/pasta-recipes/pasta-pesto/</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: ohhhh yeah let's do pesto</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: and oh my gos WE COULDMAKE OUR OWN PASTA</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: Hand-cut pappardelle</em>
</p><p>
  <em> recipes/hand-cut-pappardelle</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: you're not even remotely kidding are oyu</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: of course not, I never kid</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: HA</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: HAHA</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: HAHAHAHAHAHA</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: Evans, please</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: my ego!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: your ego is just fine, you git</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: but seriously, what part of 'I'm not a great cook' illuded you earlier</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I'm 1000000% serious, James, I'm shit. Marlene'll tell you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I've nearly poisoned her like four times</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: pasta's easy, Evans, it's just flour adn eggs</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: …</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: oh right soz, there's also the salt</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: …. !</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: there's no better time to improve your skills than when you're locked in the house</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: ugh shut up I hate it when you're right</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: SO WE'RE MAKING PASTA?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: ….. we're making pasta</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: YESSSSS</em>
</p><p>
  <em>(16:58)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: oh and what do you want to watch</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: because if you've got nothing I've DEFO got a suggestion</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: dear god</em>
</p><p>An hour later, Marlene has sequestered herself in her bedroom — 'I don't need to see this straight mating ritual,' Marlene'd said, full smirk out to play, and Lily had shrieked, 'We're not — it's not' which, predictably, hadn't helped her case in the slightest — and Lily was stood in the kitchen with her laptop.</p><p>She'd thought about using her phone — they were just FaceTiming because it didn't feel necessary, now that they'd exchanged numbers, to do this over Zoom and, anyway, Zoom felt too much like work and that was very much not the vibe that they were going for this evening — but she liked being able to see James' face and she wanted to not have to worry about having to stand her phone up when it inevitably fell over the moment her hands were covered in egg and flour. Oh, and salt.</p><p>And she was nervous, almost embarrassingly so. She hadn't changed out of her "work" clothes, though she had slid a little hair clip in to keep her hair back and she <em>might </em>have refreshed her makeup a little bit (and, okay, she <em>might </em>have also slapped on a red lipstick that had made Marlene grin at her like she'd just won the bloody lottery or something) — she'd just…</p><p>She wanted to look nice. Nicer than usual.</p><p>And she knew that James had seen her, now, in basically her pyjamas, that they'd worked from her bed — which sounded, well…</p><p>Point being, she hadn't needed to bother with any of this. The red lip and the hair clip and that. She'd just….</p><p>Wanted to.</p><p>She took a deep breath and, after checking herself in the video preview in FaceTime, typed James' name into the search bar. She pressed <em>Call </em>and waited, laptop in hand, as the high pitched ringing screamed out through the kitchen. It rang once, twice, and Lily was definitely <em>not </em>looking at herself in the little window, and it had just started ringing for a third time when James picked up.</p><p>He was smiling as his camera clicked on — that bright, warm smile that shone all over his face — and something in Lily's chest immediately relaxed.</p><p>'Hey.' James' voice was a little softer than normal, but it was as smooth as ever. 'How're you?'</p><p>Lily laughed. 'Oh, I'm alright. How're you?'</p><p>'Brilliant.' James' smile stretched, somehow, even wider, and, even though he was smiling at her through a screen, she still felt the force of it. Like a rush of heat over the whole of her body.</p><p>They carried on staring at each other for a moment, before Lily drew in a breath and straightened.</p><p>'Okay, so like —' Lily pressed her lips together and scanned the kitchen. 'Where'm I supposed to put you?'</p><p>James snorted and Lily immediately turned towards the camera and pointed her finger at him. 'Don't.'</p><p>James held his hands up. 'Sorry. Sorry.'</p><p>Lily smirked at him and cocked her eyebrow knowingly. 'No you're not.'</p><p>James laughed. 'You're right.'</p><p>Lily ended up grabbing a few of Marlene's cookbooks from where they were propped up in the corner and set her laptop on top, taking a moment to adjust the screen a bit so that the camera was at the best angle.</p><p>James smiled at her the moment she finished adjusting and, though Lily hadn't exactly been looking at the screen, she found her eyes drawn to his the moment that he started smiling at her.</p><p>'Better?' His voice was soft, softer than normal, and there was something about the texture of it. Lily could feel it on her skin.</p><p>'Better.' She held his gaze for a long moment before clapping her hands together. 'Okay, now let's fuck up some pasta.'</p><p>She wasn't, as she'd anticipated, the best at making pasta. The dough was too thick the first time, her hands were covered in sticky flour (and so was her forehead for like, a full ten minutes after she swiped her thumb across it and then <em>James didn't say anything</em>), and her noodles, when she finally got the dough thin enough to cut, were wobbly and vastly different sizes, but, really, she had fun trying her hand at something new.</p><p>Or, really, she had fun watching James successfully make pasta while he cracked jokes at how absolutely horrible she was at it.</p><p>'Look.' She was laughing, bent double over the worktop, her hands still —possibly permanently — covered in flour. 'I told you I would be shit at this. I <em>told you</em>.'</p><p>'This is just flour.' James was in stitches. 'Eggs. Evans!' He picked up a handful of his beautifully cut noodles and held them up at the screen. 'Come on, you can do it.'</p><p>'I can't.' She was using a pizza roller in hopes that it would at least make her lines straight, but judging by how thick some of her pieces of pasta were, pizza wheel or not, she couldn't cut a straight line to save her life.</p><p>'You can.' James started twirling his pasta into little nests and setting them nearly on his worktop. 'You draw straight lines all day at work. Why is this different?'</p><p>'This is dough,' Lily said. 'It's thick.'</p><p>'<em>It's thick</em>.'</p><p>Lily nearly stomped her foot. 'It is!'</p><p>James laughed. 'You're cute when you're angry.'</p><p>Lily snorted and did her best to brush her hair back over her shoulder with the back of her hand to avoid getting flour through her hair. 'I'm always cute.'</p><p>'Yeah.' James' smile softened just a little bit. 'I guess so.'</p><p>Lily flicked a bit of dough off her fingers at her screen. 'You guess.'</p><p>She managed, finally, to make herself a bowl's worth of pasta and, after struggling through the remainder of the recipe, ended up with a bowl of actually decent looking pesto.</p><p>It didn't look anything like the Michilen Star dish that James had held up to the camera to show off, but it looked at least passably edible.</p><p>'Alright.' Lily balanced her bowl in between the crook of her arm and her stomach and grabbed her laptop with her free hand so that she could carry James into the living room. 'If I get poisoned, you have to call 999 for me.'</p><p>James laughed and Lily smiled at him as she watched him snuggle back into his couch cushions, his bowl balanced on his thigh. 'Will do.'</p><p>'Good to know you have faith in me,' Marlene's voice said from behind her. Lily, not expecting Marlene to be there, jumped and nearly upset her bowl all over her lap.</p><p>'Jesus christ.'</p><p>Marlene laughed. 'She has risen.' Lily rolled her eyes, but Marlene was still smirking when she walked out of the kitchen, packet of prawn flavoured crisps in her hands. She leant to the side a little so she could see Lily's screen and waved with her free hand. 'Hey, James.'</p><p>Lily heard James say, 'Nice to meet you, Marlene,' but she was spending too much attention glaring at Marlene to keep her from saying anything embarrassing to really notice. Marlene's smirk widened ever so slightly, and Lily was bracing herself for whatever was about to come out of Marlene's mouth, but, thankfully, Marlene just winked at her before she walked back into her room.</p><p>'That's the infamous Marlene, huh?' James said when Lily turned back around.</p><p>Lily nodded. 'She's infamous alright.'</p><p>James laughed. 'She and Sirius can never meet. We'll be up to our eyeballs in infamous.'</p><p>Lily's lips twitched with a near smile. 'We definitely don't want that.'</p><p>They stared at each other for a long moment and Lily felt, oddly because of the distance between them, something like a thrum rolling through her chest.</p><p>Finally, after a moment, she cleared her throat. 'Alright, so.' She leant forward and grabbed her remote off the table. 'You said you had a suggestion for something to watch tonight?'</p><p>'Yeah.' There was a barely contained excitement in James' expression then, something that, looking back, really should have warned her or, at the very least, prepared her for what was going to come out of his mouth. 'I think we should watch the first episode of <em>Tiger King</em>.'</p><p>Lily immediately dropped her head back onto the sofa cushions with a groan that almost drowned out the sound of James' laughter. 'It'll be good,' he said, and Lily just shook her head, her hair mussing up against the fabric as she traced the lines in their ceiling.</p><p>'I very highly doubt that.'</p><p>'What if I promise that it'll be good?'</p><p>Lily picked her head up with a laugh. 'You can't guarantee that.'</p><p>'I can.' James nodded fervently. 'I absolutely can guarantee that.'</p><p>Lily rolled her eyes and shook her head at him but, mostly, she was rolling her eyes and shaking her head at herself because she was actually thinking about — like, genuinely thinking about — watching this ridiculous show with him.</p><p>She just stared at him for a beat, his bright eyes, his excited smile, and she knew, already, that she was going to say yes.</p><p>'Alright.' She slid the laptop off onto the cushion beside her and leant forward to set her bowl on the table. 'But I'm going to need a glass of wine first.'</p><p>'Oh,' the camera on James' end jostled as he tossed his computer to the side. 'Excellent idea.'</p>
<hr/><p>'I can't believe that you convinced me to watch this.' Lily took a sip of her wine before she glanced back at her computer screen. She thought that James would be watching his own television — there were, after all, only a few minutes left in the episode — but he was looking at his computer.</p><p>Looking at her.</p><p>Lily swallowed.</p><p>'You've got to admit,' James said, and he smiled the smallest little smile at her. 'It's addicting.'</p><p>She shook her head. 'No.'</p><p>'You want to know what happens in episode two —'</p><p>'Nope.'</p><p>'— you're this close to hitting play on it right now.' He held his fingers up to the screen, so close that they were nearly touching, and Lily laughed as she shook her head at him again.</p><p>'Not a chance.'</p><p>'Sure.' He was smiling a slightly superior sort of smile and it made Lily roll her eyes again. 'We both know you're going to watch the whole rest of the series tomorrow and then text me begging my forgiveness for ever having slagged me off about it.'</p><p>Lily snorted. 'Yeah, that sounds exactly like me.'</p><p>They gathered up their dinner dishes in silence, laughing a little at the juggling they both had to do to carry everything, including their laptops, safely from living room to kitchen. They chatted absently while they did the washing up — they talked, mostly, about Joe Exotic's facial hair and the fact that America really was just like… <em>America</em>, because Lily just didn't think that she could even <em>begin </em>to touch the rest of it — and it was easy, talking to him like this. Half looking at the screen, laughing easily, there was something about it that just felt….</p><p>It felt simple. Smooth.</p><p>Like it was the easiest thing in the world.</p><p>Still, she wasn't quite sure what to do when they'd finished washing up. She stood there for a moment, hands still wet, and she was surprised at how much this feeling felt like the end of the night feelings she got whenever she had a halfway decent date. The <em>should I bring him upstairs </em>feelings and the <em>jesus christ I want to kiss him </em>feelings.</p><p>Or, okay, it wasn't that she was surprised she was feeling these things, but that she just wasn't sure what to do about these feelings now that she had them. Because it wasn't like she could just lean through the screen and start snogging the life out of him.</p><p>James must have been thinking along similar lines because, after a moment, he cleared his throat and smiled softly at her. 'I had a great time with you.'</p><p>Lily breathed a laugh and, after hastily drying her hands off on her jeans, reached up to brush a piece of hair back behind her ears again. 'I had a great time, too.' She paused, took a breath. 'Do you want to keep talking? We can, uhm. Go in my room?'</p><p>James quirked an eyebrow at her. 'Are you propositioning me, Evans?'</p><p>Lily laughed, but she still felt a wicked blush start on her cheeks. 'Please.'</p><p>'I'm just saying, Evans,' James said, as Lily picked him up and carried him back to her room. 'I've got to keep my honour intact, you know.'</p><p>'Yeah.' Lily smirked at him and noticed as she did that he, too, was walking through his flat. 'Don't worry, I think your honour'll be just fine.'</p><p>James wiped fake sweat from his brow and Lily shook her head at him as she dropped down onto her bed. She clicked into her desktop WhatsApp messenger to let Marlene know, quickly, that she was now hiding in her bedroom, before she snuggled back into her pillows and settled James on her lap.</p><p>'Sorry about the typing,' she said, sure that her fingers pounding on the keys had sounded loud and clear over his speakers. 'I had to let Marlene know I'd vacated.'</p><p>'Oh, that's a good idea.' Light flashed across James' glasses as he changed screens. 'I should let Sirius know, too.'</p><p>Lily listened to James type out a swift reply, his gaze off, just slightly, to the left of his camera, before, after a resounding tap of the return key, his gaze snapped back to Lily's. 'Okay.' His smile widened a little bit slightly. 'Now, I believe you were going to say something scandalous to me?'</p><p>Lily laughed and relaxed back into her pillows a little bit. 'I thought you were worried about your honour?'</p><p>'Shit, you're right.'</p><p>Lily laughed again and shook her head at him. 'You're ridiculous.'</p><p>'Yeah.' James' smile softened just a little bit as he, too, settled back into his bed.</p><p>He had soft grey pillows.</p><p>She'd never seen this angle of his room before.</p><p>She couldn't see much, but she could see that his bed was adjacent to a window and Lily could see, just barely, a bit of London through the blinds.</p><p>'I don't think I've ever seen your room before,' Lily said. 'Or, not, like….' She waved her hands vaguely. 'This bit.'</p><p>'Wanna see?'</p><p>'Oh, uh. Sure?' She felt weird asking, but he'd offered….</p><p>And also she really wanted to see.</p><p>James lifted the laptop and started moving her slowly around in circles so that she could see various corners of his room. He pointed her, first, at his desk in the corner near the door. 'That's my desk. You've seen me there, like, every day for the last two months.'</p><p>Lily snorted and, even though she knew that he couldn't see her, she shook her head. 'I've got a chest of drawers over here,' he turned her to another wall so she could see the long, short chest of drawers along the far wall. There was a mess of things littered on top — she could pick out deodorant, a balled up t shirt, and what looked like a handful of pictures propped up against the wall — but she didn't get a proper look at it before James turned her again.</p><p>'I've got a very cluttered side table here —' He was right, he had a glass of water, a lamp, a glasses case, a pair of books, lip balm, AirPods, and, like, three chargers curled up on an <em>incredibly </em>tiny bedside table. '— and then we're back here.' James turned the camera again and, when his face was centred in the frame, he smiled at her again.</p><p>'I like it,' Lily said. And she did. It was a little cluttered, a little messy, but it was <em>James</em>.</p><p>James laughed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. 'Thanks. It's a bit of a mess, so, don't tell my mum.'</p><p>Lily hummed and shook her head. 'Too late. I already texted her.'</p><p>'Fuck.'</p><p>'It's a nice room though,' Lily insisted. 'It suits you.'</p><p>'Because I'm a mess?'</p><p>Lily laughed and nodded. 'Yeah.'</p><p>'Cheers.'</p><p>She grinned. 'I hope I get to see it in person one day.'</p><p>James' smile shifted into the slightest smirk and his right eyebrow ticked up just a touch. 'You hope, eh?'</p><p>Lily nodded and, when she spoke, her tone was matter-of-fact. 'Yeah.'</p><p>James laughed. 'Well, then.'</p><p>'Is that alright?'</p><p>James nodded. 'Yeah.' He scrubbed a hand through his hair again. 'More than alright. Which, uh,' he laughed. 'Sounds weird maybe.'</p><p>Lily laughed and shook her head. 'Not weird.'</p><p>'I just can't really believe, like….' James shook his head a little. She was sure that there was more to that and she waited quietly for a moment.</p><p>'I've liked you for a long time,' James finally said. She expected him to laugh, to grin, to maybe make what he was saying feel a little less heavy, but the look on his face was dead serious.</p><p>He bloody meant it.</p><p>'Really?'</p><p>James nodded. 'Yeah.' He breathed a little laugh and gave his head a small shake, his eyes dropping, for a moment, down towards his lap before he met her gaze again. 'The first time I saw you, I was like…' He touched a hand to his chest and looked off, a little cheekily, towards the ceiling.</p><p>Lily laughed a little, but she also couldn't quite breathe through the feeling swooping through her chest. 'What does that mean?'</p><p>'Just like, <em>done</em>,' James said. 'I came home and told Sirius that I'd just met the most gorgeous woman in the world.'</p><p>Lily laughed again. 'I bet Sirius loved that.'</p><p>'Oh, he did. Accused me of falling in love at first sight again.' James shrugged, either completely oblivious to or completely ignoring the fact that he'd just dropped the L-bomb in the middle of their first date.</p><p>Lily drew in a soft breath. 'Is that something you do often?'</p><p>James' eyes flicked to hers again. He held her gaze for a beat, two, before he shook his head slowly back and forth. 'Not really.'</p><p>Lily hummed softly.</p><p>James nodded slowly. 'Yeah.'</p><p>They were both quiet for a moment, and though James wasn't looking at her any sort of way — wasn't looking like he expected something or like he was waiting on her to reciprocate — Lily could feel the feelings in her chest right at the surface, weighing against her ribs like they were trying to get her to talk. She was equally nervous, though, about the prospect of telling him, of telling him that she'd always been a little nervous around him, at, you know….</p><p>At opening up.</p><p>'I didn't realise falling in love at first sight was a thing,' Lily said, laughing a little. 'Like at all.'</p><p>'Well,' James smiled a little, a tiny, crooked little thing that made Lily's chest ache and her fingers almost itch to trace the curve of it. 'I guess I'm an "all emotions bared" sort of person. Makes me fall hard.'</p><p>'Yeah.' Lily laughed a little, but it was the surprise of realisation, more than anything, that was humouring her. She hadn't thought about it before, hadn't articulated it to herself quite like that, but James really was the sort who kept everything right there on the surface.</p><p>He was remarkably easy to be around in that way. He was always just… telling you what he needed. Showing you how he felt.</p><p>James smiled at her. 'You seem surprised.'</p><p>'I don't know.' She shrugged. 'I never thought about it before, I guess. I always just sort of thought you were loud.'</p><p>James barked a laugh. 'Well, I'm definitely loud.'</p><p>'Yeah, but you're sweet, too.' Her voice was softer than she intended, but she didn't mind the effect of it. It was honest. 'I like you.'</p><p>'Aw, Evans, you've gone soft.'</p><p>If he'd been there, she would have shoved him. 'Shut up.'</p><p>They chatted for a while longer — not about anything in particular, really, just whatever floated to top of mind — before, finally, Lily realised that it was approaching ten and she needed to, probably, end things off for the evening. She didn't have anywhere else to be, but she also couldn't sit on FaceTime and stare at James all night.</p><p>As much as she might have preferred to do exactly that every time she tried to convince herself it was time to hang up.</p><p>'I should probably go and give Marlene some company,' Lily said, now a few minutes before ten. 'I can hear her out in the living room and I'm sure she's dying to get a debrief on this whole thing,' she gestured loosely between the two of them.</p><p>'Oh,' James leant closer to the camera, eyes wide with excitement, 'what are you going to tell her about me?'</p><p>'That you made me embarrass myself in front of you on our first date <em>and </em>still made me actually try to cook things and that, somehow, I still managed to end the night wanting to go on another one of these weird dates with you.'</p><p>James laughed and pumped — actually <em>pumped </em>— his fist in the air. 'Excellent.'</p><p>Lily raised her eyebrow at him. 'I wasn't aware we were in Ibiza.'</p><p>James laughed again. 'Stop.'</p><p>'Nope.'</p><p>'God, you're great.'</p><p>Lily laughed. 'I know.'</p><p>They both fell quiet again, the amusement between them fading into something soft and easy. She wasn't really sure how she was feeling, if she was honest, didn't know if she could put a name on it, but she knew that she liked it. That she liked how warm she felt how, underneath all her excitement, how deeply calm she felt.</p><p>Like, even when the surface of the water is churning with waves, there's that deep, slow current underneath that just… grounds you.</p><p>She felt like that.</p><p>It was the most bizarre thing she'd ever felt in her life.</p><p>'Let's go on a date again soon,' she said. 'No more cooking, though, because I think I'll burn down my kitchen if I have to do that again.'</p><p>James laughed, a chuckle deep in his throat that Lily swore she could feel against her skin. 'Okay, no cooking. What's your schedule look like next week?'</p><p>'Would you believe it,' Lily feigned surprise, 'my calendar's wide open.'</p><p>'How about a cheeky Tuesday date, then? That should give us a few days to sort out what we want to do.'</p><p>'Yeah.' Lily nodded, the smile already growing on her lips. 'That sounds perfect.'</p><p>'Perfect.'</p><p>And, still, they were ringing off, winding down, but the closer she got to actually having to close out FaceTime and drop back into her flat, the less she found that she wanted to do it. She wanted to maintain this illusion that James was sitting in her room with her, wanted to feel this closeness, even this fabricated closeness, for even just a little bit longer —</p><p>'I should let you get back to Marlene,' James said. 'I think I hear Sirius getting restless in the kitchen anyway.'</p><p>'No, yeah, we should —' She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. 'I'll see you on Tuesday.'</p><p>'Tuesday.' James smiled. 'Goodnight, Lily.'</p><p>She smiled softly and her heart — christ — her heart felt warm and bright and buzzy. 'Goodnight, James.'</p><p>He looked at her for one more moment before, finally, he lifted his hand, waved goodbye, and rang off.</p><p>Lily stared at her screen for a moment before, still smiling to herself, she slid her laptop off onto her duvet, jumped up out of bed, and walked back out into the living room. Marlene was sitting on the couch, the widest smirk on Earth plastered on her face, and Lily did her best to get her face under control as she plopped down on the other end of the sofa.</p><p>Marlene had a bowl of popcorn balanced beside her on the cushions, and, the moment she got settled, Lily leant over and grabbed a fistful.</p><p>'Whatcha watching?'</p><p>'<em>Tiger King</em>.'</p><p>Lily groaned and grabbed another handful of popcorn. 'Are you serious?'</p><p>'In my defence, you started this.'</p><p>Lily shot her a look but, still, she turned back to face the television for a moment. She was just getting ready to suggest that she and Marlene dig out of their puzzles — quarantine had, honest to fucking god, turned them into pensioners — when her mobile lit up from where she'd dropped it on the side of the sofa.</p><p>She looked down at the notification and, seeing that it was a text from James, she immediately smiled and unlocked her screen.</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: I cant believe you like me</em>
</p><p>Lily smiled to herself and, with a bit of balancing to make sure she didn't tip her plate over in her lap, tapped out a swift reply.</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I just said goodbye to you two seconds ago</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: I know I just cant believe it</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: YOU LIKE ME</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: I'm going to unlike you if you keep it up</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: impossible</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: try me</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: oh I'll try you alright</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: the minute we're out of quarantine</em>
</p><p>Lily's cheeks burned as she read James' last message and she bit the corner of her lip in an effort to contain her smile. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest that she felt like she couldn't quite breathe and she was three quarters of the way to texting back <em>fuck it let's get on FaceTime get in your bedroom Potter </em>when Marlene started laughing from the other end of the sofa.</p><p>'Tell Romeo I say hi,' Marlene said. Her smile was a mile wide and so fucking amused, and Lily knew that Marlene, somehow, knew exactly what she was up to.</p><p>'I'm not — we're not.'</p><p>Marlene barked a laugh. 'Sure, Jan.' Marlene leant forward and grabbed her cup off the coffee table, her smile turning into an all out smirk as she stood.</p><p>'Wear your headphones if you get on FaceTime. I don't need to hear man groaning across the house.'</p><p>Lily's pink cheeks flushed a violent red, partially (mostly) from getting caught out in her exact line of thinking. 'Oh my <em>god</em>.'</p><p>Marlene just laughed brightly and ruffled Lily's hair as she walked past her into the kitchen.</p><p>Still, mortified or not….</p><p>
  <em>Lily Evans: well, maybe we can play around with facetime one of these days….</em>
</p><p>
  <em>James Potter: you got yourself a deal, Evans</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Find me on <a href="http://elanev91.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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